In Praise of Clint Mansell

Originally achieving some sort of semblance of fame as the singer-guitarist of ’80s alternative band Pop Will Eat Itself, Clint Mansell is today the man I will happily and enthusiastically call the best film score composer working today. Born in Coventry in 1963, Mansell’s work as an indie musician revealed a spirit keen to explore new ground, encompassing pop, hip-hop, electronica and rock over their 10 year existence from from ’86 to ’96.

After the band members went their separate ways, Mansell was approached by young filmmaker Darren Aronofsky to score his debut feature, π (sometimes written as Pi). Following the success of π, Aronofsky and Mansell collaborated again, resulting in one of the most iconic pieces of film composition of all time. Reused everywhere from the trailers for Lord of the Rings to Sky Sports News, ‘Lux Aeterna’, taken from Mansell’s soundtrack for Requiem for a Dream is a swirling, menacing orchestral arrangement that almost anyone will recognise if you sing it to them, even if they don’t know where it came from. The refrain of ‘Lux Aeterna’ appears in Requiem for a Dream in several different forms, as Mansell blends the classical strings piece with trip-hop, trance and techno versions, alongside made-up gameshow themes and crazed dance tunes. Aronofsky’s second film is a masterpiece for many reasons, but I’m certain nobody would disagree with the assertion that Mansell’s score is a very important part of that; the film’s infamously harrowing climax would be a lesser sequence without ‘Lux Aeterna’ on the soundtrack.

The soundtrack for Requiem for a Dream made Mansell’s reputation as a film score composer, and he began to accept regular jobs, including working on films as diverse as The Hole, Sahara and Doom.

In 2006, Mansell’s 3rd film with Darren Aronofsky, The Fountain was released. Although the film continues to divide critics and audiences, there can be no dispute that the score is one of the most moving, exhilarating film scores of all time. Made while working with the respected Kronos String Quartet and the Scottish post-rock band Mogwai, The Fountain includes several solo piano pieces, as well as Mansell’s more familiar electronic quirks and orchestral grandeur, and is arguably both the most ambitious and most successful musically of his work to date. Wherever you stand on the film as a whole (and I happen to regard The Fountain as one of the finest works of cinema it has ever been my privilege to see), the soundtrack just works perfectly, both with and without the accompanying visuals.

For Smokin’ Aces in 2007, the director, Joe Carnahan, gave Clint Mansell just six weeks to compose and record the entire score, with no guiding rough cut. And he did it. On time. Not only were Mansell’s fans satisfied with the work, but when the Smokin’ Aces soundtrack was released without Mansell’s compositions, Carnahan claims to have had fans driving past his house in the dead of night playing the Requiem for a Dream score at full volume. Carnahan even jokingly suggests that he had received threats of physical violence: true or not, the fans’ demands were heard, and Mansell’s score for Smokin’ Aces got an album release.

Over the last couple of years, Clint Mansell has worked again with director Darren Aronofsky on the Oscar-nominated The Wrestler, starring Mickey Rourke. Although The Wrestler does not have the same kind of scene-stealing music as Mansell’s previous work with Aronofsky, it is nonetheless an effective, subtler attempt at a score. This year, Mansell created a sparse piano, guitar, drums and effects score for Duncan Jones’s debut sci-fi, Moon. One of my favourite films of this year, Moon is a brooding, quiet, atmospheric movie that is really made great by four things: Sam Rockwell’s career-best performance; Jones’s assured, note-perfect direction; the eye-catching production design by Tony Noble; and Mansell’s routinely great score.

I haven’t heard nearly as much of his work as I would like to, but he’s a rare figure in cinema; a composer whose involvement in a project would be enough to make me see a film. Everything I have heard by Clint Mansell has been distinctive and beautiful in equal measure. I’m hoping that his work with Aronofsky will continue, and hope that he’ll be working on Duncan Jones’s second film, the sci-fi-noir Mute (currently set for release in 2011).

As I close this article up, the penultimate track of The Fountain is playing on my iTunes library. One of the tracks featuring both the Kronos Quartet and Mogwai, ‘Death Is The Road To Awe’ is an 8 minute epic of guitar, piano, orchestra, choir and percussion, with a chiming glockenspiel melody alongside the grand sweeping strings section. It’s a fitting sonic accompaniment to the end to one of the few films that I would identify as “life changing”.

David

Boxing Movies

The Rocky movies. OK. Raging Bull. Brilliant. Million Dollar Baby. Fine. The Greatest. Good. BUT, why isn’t there more movies about the oldest of sports?

At the beginning of human existence there was only 3 ways in which man could compete. 3 ways in which the Hunter-Gatherer could better his fellow man. They were running, swimming and fighting. The lefty-led bashing of the noble sport of boxing has been futile. There is something inside of a lot of people which compels them to be interested in the battle between 2 men. I am one of these people.
Boxing requires not only strength but also skill, technique, speed, tactics, knowledge of your own strengths/weaknesses, hours of training and willpower. There are numerous boxing stories: the rise to world champion, the slippery slope of continuing after your peak, the need to fight on after your prime for money, competitive spirit, the need in a man to better his peer etc.
Boxing is filled with potential storylines. So why isn’t there more boxing movies? Especially ones based on real boxers.

p.s. Mayweather JR vs Pacquiao has to happen. The 2 best boxers in the world (pound-for-pound). For Mayweather JR to cry-off (just to maintain his zero loss record) would bring the boxing world to its knees. This could be the fight that reinvigorates boxing as a mainstream sport.

Paz

Misogyny is bad?

“Wussy-wushy scenes just bore the hell out of me. I just want them to get on and start bashing people up.” (Guy Ritchie in interview with the Daily Telegraph in, February 1999)

The more I get into my undergrad dissertation on the British crime film, the more often I find myself re-assessing my opinion of Guy Ritchie. Initially, he annoyed the hell out of me. I found his visual style amazing. He has such an eye for shots and exciting editing patterns. But, what always stood out was his cliched dialogue and 2-D characters. I began to loathe him (enough to rate him as bad as Nick Love). However, the more I read about him, and the more I watch his films, the more I like him.

I hated him so much that I bet Mike Glass (on his radio show Your Opinion Is Worthless – film reviews on a Monday from 3-5pm) that if the new Ritchie-directed Sherlock Holmes movie got 3 stars or more in a broadsheet that I would give him £100. But now, I love him. He’s misogynistic. He glamourises violence. I love that.

In the world of “New Men”, it’s refreshing that blokes can be blokes. That the sensitive men (the strong and silent type women like) and the emotionally intelligent man are actually NOT MEN! Men play football, fuck birds and drink beer. Fact. Blokes are no longer allowed to be blokes. So thank god Ritchie provides an escape to a nostalgic world of 1960s men. Men who shat on feminism. Men who could be vulgar and disgusting, but at least had some backbone.

I’m not trying to be contrary and get a reaction from the progressive and liberal among you. I just want to say that if we can have namby-pamby, indie films about emotions and feelings then why can’t we have “Guns ‘N’ Geezers”? If women can escape in fantasies about some Vampire kid, then why can’t men dream of a time when women were silent and men used violence to solve all their problems?

Paz

The ‘British Urban’ Cycle

Bullet Boy, Kidulthood, Adulthood, Rollin’ with the Nines; what do these films have in common? London, gangs, guns, crime and grime. If Ritchie’s movies are over-the-top Guns ‘n’ Geezers tripe. With a knowing smirk directed at the 1960s and more shallow postmodernism than you could shake a stick (or gun) at then the ‘British Urban’ Cycle is its antithesis.
With real locales, real characters, real stories and real concerns; the new breed of British crime film owes more to the late 1950s and early 1960s Kitchen-Sink drama than to any British crime film before it. London in these films isn’t even the East End. There’s no geezers running their manor from a backstreet pub. It’s kids in single-parent families living in North London just trying to get by. The parents lament their children joining gangs. These new criminals might not have the complete family unit but they have no need to turn to crime. They have material things (Nike trainers, Adidas tracksuits, BMXs) but crime is a sign of masculinity and brings honour, and respect, for your name.
So what are these films telling us? That London has a knife and gun crime problem, that gangs exist, that crime is about respect not money, that the pursuit of money is to facilitate the earning of respect, and that the only way to get that money is through dealing drugs, shooting thugs and not being taken for a bunch of mugs.
As longh as crime of this variety exists then the films will continue to follow. The four films mentioned at the top of this musing are (for my money) modern classics in the British crime genre. They are realistic, brutally violent and brutally honest. Performances are superb and they have encouraged the production of some the finest work in the grime scene. This may be the most important British crime genre cycle since the spivs.

Paz Bassra

Thoughts on British Cinema

“Apart from a brief upsurge of interest between 1942 and 1947, British cinema has been disparaged and depised for most of its existence.” (Murphy, 1997)
Why? When we have directors such as Lean, Powell & Pressburger, Carol Reed, Michael Crichton, Mike Hodges, Guy Hamilton, Ken Loach, Stephen Frears, Allan Clarke, Anthony Minghella, Mike Leigh . . . Actors such as James Mason, John Mills, Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Stanley Baker, Albert Finney, Richard Burton, Anthony Hopkins, Clive Owen, Daniel Craig . . . Actresses such as Googie Withers, Judi Dench, Helen Mirren . . .
I could list more (set designers, producers, editors, scriptwriters) but you get the picture. The amount of genuine talent produced in these Isles surely means that some interesting and worthy cinema has been made. Murphy was writing in 1997 and a small increase of writing on Britsh cinema has occurred. Yet, this increase has neglected the contemporary British output. The academice journals pour scorn on Ritchie and Love (in contrast to the tabloid press and mainstream magazines) and somehow (unfathomably) Danny Boyle and Ken Loach’s work (post-1990) have been overlooked.
In all honesty, for a landmass as small as the United Kingdom we really punch above our weight with regards to quality work from our own national film industry and from what our expats provide for Hollywood. In this decade: Bond has been reborn and reinvigorated; Meadows has captured the spirit of lowlife England; Love and Ritchie have turned a profit; Minghella was reaching his zenith (sadly spoilt by his untimely death); Boyle has become one of the top 10 directors in the world; Gervais has wowed Hollywood enough to take him from TV to High Concept Blockbusters; Knightley has put the sex back into the period drama (sadly lacking since Margaret Lockwood); and, Statham has redefined what makes an action hero in the post-modern film industry.
It’s up to our generation to celebrate what Brits are bringing to cinema. It’s up to our generation to make british cinema; to make films that tell stories about our nation. It’s up to our generation to make sure that British cinema never dies.

Paz Bassra