We’re after the same rainbow’s end

I watched most of the Oscar’s tonight, for the first time in many years. I hadn’t been missing much, though Jon Stewart was pretty funny. I have to admit, though, I had never even heard of Crash. That’s how out of it I am in terms of movies. Oh well…

Anyways, given the movie theme of the evening, I thought I’d write about a couple of my favorite uses of songs in movies.

Dare – Stan Bush (The Transformers Movie)

The Transformers Movie was my favorite movie when I was a kid. It’s not quite so high on the list now, but I still really enjoy it. It features Leonard Nimoy, Orson Welles (in his last role ever), has one of the all-time best bad-ass scenes when Optimus Prime takes out basically all the Decepticons by himself, and has a great soundtrack. From that soundtrack, this is my favorite song. It plays in the beginning and is returned to in the final climactic moments. It’s got a great 80s feel as the jangly synthesizers abound. And, it’s a little silly, but it still gets me pumped up to hear the chorus: “Dare! dare to keep all of your dreams alive / It’s time to take a stand / And you can win, if you dare.” Yeah, Hot Rod, kick Galvatron’s ass!

Most of the Time – Bob Dylan (High Fidelity)

This is probably my favorite use of a song in a movie ever. Obviously I love High Fidelity, not just because it’s got John Cusack, and not just because of the music-snob associations, but also because it’s a really great story. It’s hard to convey love on film, and even harder when the main characters are already broken up when the movie starts. This song comes in close to the end when Rob is finally starting to get that he has a lot of things he’s going to have to deal with if he wants to actually start being happy. That moment is so powerful because it shows that sometimes the only way that you can get what you want is to give it up.

Rob spends the whole movie trying to get Laura back without ever owning up to his own role in her decision to break up with him. He never stops to figure out what he really wants out of life: he just wants Laura back because then his life can continue the way that it was. After the funeral, he is finally able to tell Laura “I’m sorry” and then heads out into the rain, to get on with his life. It’s a very sad moment, because it’s when he first really looks at the future, which is a scary prospect. As he sits on a bench in the pouring rain, waiting for a bus and catalogues his own faults, you realize that Laura was perfectly right to break up with him, which is a strange feeling since you’ve spent the entire movie getting to know and love Rob, and have been seeing things from his perspective.

So this is a scene about sadness, about losing someone and moving on, but it’s also a scene about redemption. Rob finally turns a corner when he embraces his own failures and fears. He sits in the pouring rain and the grief runs over him but in doing so, perhaps, washes him clean.

For this scene, no song could be better. First of all, if ever a song felt like rain, it was this song. I can’t tell if it’s only because the scene and the song as so closely interlinked in my mind, but hearing it makes me think of a thunderstorm, of deep dark nights and being huddled up, trying to keep warm, staring up into the sky and feeling the rain against my face.

As for the rest of it, Bob Dylan’s voice (a handicap at times in his career) is perfectly suited to this situation. Gravely, wise, but also tender, he tells of the regrets we feel about those we have left behind. In the same way that the scene is about loss and redemption, the song is about beginning anew, leaving behind the person that you loved. But, there is a delightful tension in lines like:
“Most of the time, she ain’t even in my mind
I wouldn’t know her if I saw her, she’s that far behind
Most of the time, I can’t even be sure
If she was ever with me or if I was ever with her”
Most of the time, we are fine. But, only most of the time. Sometimes, it hurts so bad you can’t stand it. And I think the singer is in one of those moments. His constant repetitions that “most of the time” he is okay, doesn’t even miss her, doesn’t even notice that she’s gone, I see as him grappling, struggling for something to hold onto. Most of the time, I can survive, but at times like these, it feels very hard. It is not a hopeless song, because he does know that the pain eases and life moves on. But it is a song about how hard it is to lose love, and the struggle that goes on inside.

This is the tension of the scene. Rob is only able to end up proposing to Laura because he finds himself inside this song for a brief period, seeing a future without Laura, and forcing himself to think about what being with her means to him. He finally sees that a life without Laura is bad because of the deep love that will be gone.

The narrator of Dylan’s song ends up alone, while Rob and Laura end up together but the crucial moment remains the same, I think. Rob is faced with a choice: move beyond Laura and deal with it, most of the time. Or, commit to Laura in earnest and realize that there will be times when this is terrifying, being with one person forever, but that most of the time, it will be good. That’s all that happiness is, I think. Realizing that we cannot control everything, but that we have the choice to find joy in what life we are given the chance to live.

Moon River – Audrey Hepburn (Breakfast at Tiffany’s)
Audrey Hepburn…need I say more? Breakfast at Tiffany’s is a great film on its own merits, but I would happily watch the whole thing even if it was terrible, just to get the two minutes of her strumming the guitar, singing “Moon River.” She’s so beautiful and sad and distant and fragile. Henri Mancini won an Academy Award for the song, and rightly so, but it’s her delivery that turns it from a great song into a magical one.