Alien Insurrection

by Doug Adams

Claustrophobia, it would seem, is overrated. I've always seen horror films' appeal described as a sense of claustrophobia, a sense of smothering dread. For me--and this is especially true about the Alien series--it's always been the exact opposite. They're more about sterile, open spaces. It all seems to come from that same urge that can cause us to sleep under the covers even on hot nights. We need to have our backs covered--to be buttressed up against something so that we're aware of all of our dimensions at once. I guess it stems from our liquid-immersion/back-to-the-womb thing, but I've always been highly suspect of psychological generalities. Maybe it's just an evolutionary hang-over. Nevertheless, the first three Alien movies seem positively based on this need. The first brilliant film was filled with antiseptic, bloodless images. The white, clammy set, the sounds of echoing dripping water and chains. (Think of the scene where Harry Dean Stanton's character wanders into the seemingly ceiling-less room looking for the cat.) Goldsmith's gorgeous score goes right to all of this. The theme is so lonely, so wandering, so exposed, so unsafe. Even the action stuff is based on one or two note ideas scored in unadorned octaves. It's usually bone-dry and animalistic, kind of the apotheosis and culmination of all of our unprotected impulses.

Horner's score for Aliens, while musically troubled, is still cleverly doing the same things in a more action-oriented guise. Listen to the wide spacing of the strings in the opening, or even the reverberating military drums and solo tam-tam. (More proof, I think, that much of Horner's success has come more from the fact that he's a very gifted score spotter.) Goldenthal's great score for Alien 3 does this all, too. It's bleak, and it's bared--all about textural clarity. Those boy soprano solos aren't lushly covered, the aleatoric contrabass clarinets and contra bassoons aren't dancing under a pad of strings.

Open spaces are scary because our potential to utilize our environments is diminished--destroyed even. We're reduced to our most primitive, our most needy states. Then when we're attacked (either mentally or physically, and the Alien films really deal with both), we respond with our most panic-stricken, basic abilities. That's what good Alien music is conveying, at least to me.

And, that is why Alien Resurrection doesn't work at all. The film itself is so crowded with images: hot steam, musty corridors, sweaty faces (hey, Winona Ryder looks exactly like Lukas Haas when she's wet!), tight pants, dripping goo, close-up camera work. Even though many of these images are supposed to be threatening, they lose their impact by making us too aware of our total physical predicament. Fear is the unknown, and when every side of our senses is packed with detailed information, as dangerous as that information may be, it is turned into a palpable, and therefore theoretically surmountable obstacle. And this explanation is ignoring the fact that by turning your film's heroine into a half-monster, and turning the monster into a button-pushing, human-hugging costume you've destroyed the film before shooting a frame. This is not to mention scenes where people pick up a chunk or their own brains before dying, and utter lines such as "You did it, you saved the Earth."

Don't Score Until You See the Whites of Their Eyes

John Frizzell's score does the same thing as the film by packing itself with so much of everything that we can only end up comfortably nestled in prefab "fear." Here's something to try at home. Go to your piano and play the highest and lowest notes together, very softly. Now, play a minor chord in the middle of the piano, don't leave skip any tones, and play it as loud as possible. Which one is more disturbing? Alien 4's score is brimming with thick, pushy chords, poppish synth grooves, churning strings, wailing altissimo horns--you name an action or horror trope, and it's got it. And for the most part they're all happening simultaneously throughout the film. I don't know if this was Frizzell's fault or not; if he had scored the movie with the kind of distant chilliness I'm talking about, it might have been at odds with the picture. But, isn't this exactly the kind of thing that film music is supposed to be able to do--to alter our perceptions of the visuals? The music is all over the film, which makes it more commodious than threatening. The only truly frightening scene in the film occurs when the space pirates' leader is wandering down a hall with no music. For only a second, it escapes a filmic sense of fear and enters into something more undefined.

As music, the score seemed equally as lost. I'll admit at the outset that I don't have the album, and I have no intentions of ever buying it. But, in the film, there didn't seem to be any sort of long form development whatsoever, just stitched together fright and action licks. Frizzell's Dante's Peak at least had some sign posts of thematical or motivic material (in the form of James Newton Howard's theme). Who on Earth ever got the idea that it's okay for atonal music to have no motivic relationships? There is nothing more offensive to me than to hear what is effectively a slap in the face of 20th Century harmony. Would a composer write a tonal song in which there is no chorus, no verses, only random musical lines? Music exists in both the vertical and horizontal dimensions--architecture is elemental. You don't necessarily have to have returning melodies, but textures and fabrics can be related. Orchestrations can be related. Using everything all the time doesn't count as a relationship.

I met John Frizzell shortly before he began scoring Alien Resurrection, and I found him to be a really nice guy. I bear him no ill will at all, but I hope that he looks upon Alien 4 as a learning experience.

Multiple Addendums and Extras:

Grisham and Orchestration

Re: the Grisham column a week or two back, I found it interesting that almost every letter I received said that they didn't feel that Bernstein's score for The Rainmaker really worked, but all the same people suggested that they would still recommend scoring Grisham with a full orchestra because it's the "pinnacle of musicality," and "the greatest challenge for a composer." I still maintain that true musicality is not about how you say something, but about what you're saying. By that criteria, the orchestra is no more a "pinnacle" than a rock band. Chopsticks played by the London Symphony Orchestra is still trite. We need to remember that most of our emotional associations in music have been taught to us. There's nothing inherently emotional about any music, that's all a construct. Sure, there are certain association that are effective, and that have stuck in our minds. But in order to take things in new directions, or even to the next step, we need to unlearn what we have learned. And there's no more skill needed to write for violas and celli than for hurdy gurdy and steel drums, or a Chinese pipa, or a South Indian Mridangum. It's just different technicalities, which (academia excluded) don't really matter. If composers really feel that the full orchestra is the way to go with Grisham, that's fine. But do it because it's the only way to get across your relevant statement, not because it's supposedly the "highest" and most "complex" form of expression.

Book Report

I got an anonymous tip through e-mail the other day regarding the VideoHound Soundtrack Guide:

In the middle of the book, there are hundreds of show-oriented Broadway album reviews, most all written by Didier himself. The one problem with this is--Didier PRODUCED virtually HALF of the albums he's reviewing! Sort of makes for a conflict of interest (and is rather shady), don't you think?

I'm not going to make any comments here, because I don't know Didier personally and because I probably have already offended everyone who worked on Alien 4. But, there it is...

The Usual Trivia

Hey all you Usual Suspects fans out there, here's something interesting I just learned about composer John Ottman. In the beginning of the movie, when you see a gloved hand (supposedly Keyser Soze's) drop a lit cigarette to ignite a trail of gas, that's composer John Ottman playing Soze. Now go amaze your friends.

Doug@filmscoremonthly.com