The Ringing Grooves of Change

by Doug Adams

Ang Lee's film The Ice Storm takes place during late November, 1973 in a climate primed for political and social upheaval. The film is set up as a sort of diorama of upper class Connecticut families and their trials and flounderings. On a surface level, the story is about swingers (or swinger wannabes) coming to grips with the fact that they have to grow up and lay their bed-hopping days to rest. But beyond that, it's a fascinating study of how alien we can become when we have totally outlived our ability to fit into a changing world. The characters in this story are wildly out of sync with the world; they've become so wrapped up in their own synthetically manufactured habits that they've lost their places in life. The adults are unable to come to grips with the fact that the 1960s did not permanently alter the course of modern society, and that they do not live under a permanently protective blanket of inconsequential pleasure. The children are forced to deal with not only their own personal changes as they grow into adults, but with the fact that the world they were promised by their own childlike parents, will never materialize. None of these characters can adapt, so they live in a kind of suspended animation where they continually grind down their own moral fibres without any real consequence or pleasure - they've become numb to their own indulgences. Their interactions have been reduced to purely physical relations, blank stares, or clumsy attempts at conversation. They attempt living at extremes to shock themselves back into an emotional reaction, but to no avail. Their souls are hung on hooks in a frozen world that continually recycles itself, waiting for something to jar it out of its rut.

[NOTE: SPOILERS AHEAD FOR THE ICE STORM IN THIS NEXT PARAGRAPH]

During the final act of the film, the eponymous ice storm begins and effectively immobilizes this world. It is in the aftermath of this storm, during the night, that one of the characters is electrocuted and killed by a downed power line. The body is discovered and brought home just as the sun rises, and the ice begins to melt - an obvious death/re-birth allusion. At this point, here in the new world, one of the main characters breaks down and cries: the first show of true adult emotion in the film and the first sign of regret, acknowledgment, and an emotional rather than physical adulthood.

Opposition by Design

Composer Mychael Danna's score for The Ice Storm is as intelligently conceived as any I've heard this year. The two primary elements are an Indian flute melody, and the sound of Indonesian gamelan music. The flute seems to be the sound of all that is natural. It's like the song of the land speaking to traditions more established and honorable than these trendy helots can understand. There's a somber, almost sad quality to the flute's short phrases, which are very often dressed up with the accompaniment of tribal shakers and low drums. Other times a blanket of strings will fall behind the soloist, or the lines will be imitated by a solo oboe or clarinet. The flute solos themselves are freely twisting and placidly uncontrollable. I think that the fact that they're so unmetered speaks of their naturalism - they're not governed by human "organization." (Obviously, they are, but the implication is noted.)

The gamelan music, on the other hand, is rhythmical and controlled. It's man-made and rigidly synthetic in its organization. For those who don't know, a gamelan is not a single instrument but a orchestra of long, thick slabs of metal which are tuned to a very specific, but non-Western scale. Gamelan music is constructed much like American minimalism where overlapping phrases are repeated and slightly altered over a period of time. This loop-like quality of the gamelan music is a perfect representation of this society's inertia. It's also got a crystalline element to it which prefigures the storm to come. Danna often weaves midrange woodwinds or pizzicato strings into the gamelan orchestration to create a more personalized, Western-influenced color.

The flute and gamelan are used against each other in the score to create much the same sort of out of sync feeling as in the story. There is never any attempt made to reconcile them, and while they do exist side by side, they're not exactly happy neighbors. It's a brilliant instance of using musics which purposely do not gel for dramatic effect. The differing elements bump up against one another, or are layered on top of each other, but they are never consolidated into any kind of single-minded statement. They are allowed to rub each other raw.

The Ice Storm's score also contains a good bit of Western orchestral writing, most notably near the end of the film. Wisely, the composer does not trot out some sort of weepy, elegiac now-we-can-cry type writing for the death. This music, scored for strings and woodwinds, is remarkably non-emotional while remaining quite tonal and expressive. That may seem like the smallest of compliments, but do you realize how difficult it is to write unemotional tonal music in a Romantic vein? The solution here involves some wafting, minor (and a few major) chords which slowly pass from one to the next without any serious rises in intensity or volume. It's almost a case of pitch being used as a texture. Instead of generating melodies and lines, the score produces a tinted stillness where neither purely textural nor purely melodic music would suffice. It reminds me a bit of Thomas Newman's writing, but Danna is his own composer with a unique voice. Watch this name, folks, because I think Mychael Danna is poised to be a terrifically influential composer during the coming years.

Trivia Answer From Last Week

Vince Guaraldi's nickname was Dr. Funk. No kidding.

Also

Two weeks ago in Halloween Recommendations Part One, I discussed the music from Bela Lugosi's death in Ed Wood. I should have mentioned that the music, as I discussed it, was as it appears on the album and not in the film. I also misquoted a line. "Freaks and dope addicts" should have read "misfits and dope addicts." I apologize to the misfits of the world. And for anyone wondering, the title of this column comes from Lord Tennyson: "Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change." I thought it was apt.

Next Week: Sharship Troopers!

E-mail: Doug@filmscoremonthly.com