Music for a Not-So-Great City

By Doug Adams

Quick, name a movie that features outlandish visuals, large gear-like architecture in the backdrops, a finale full of blinding light and tumbling buildings, and evil characters from a dying breed who wear complicated, detailed robes, make icky clicking noises, finish their statements with the phrase, "yes?," depend upon a milky white fluid tied to the nature of the good characters, and hang out in cavernous, tiered structures. If you said "Dark City," you're right. You're also right if you said "The Dark Crystal." Ok, to be sure there are plenty of differences between the two projects--like, say, the plots--but I can't help but wonder if City director Alex Proyas had Dark Crystal on in the next room while he was banging out ideas for his film. After all, following the immense popularity of Proyas' The Crow and its score by Graeme Revell, why does one suddenly chose to work with Crystal-alum Trevor Jones? Nevertheless, Jones landed the gig here, though his work certainly doesn't sound much like the erstwhile Romantic tones of Crystal. In fact, other than one big orchestral cue based on Gustav Holst's Mars, The Bringer of War, Jones' opts for a kind of Eric Serra mix of synth loops and orchestral drones and punches. And as appropriate and interesting as that may promise to be, I feel Jones' work on Dark City presents a pair of missed opportunities.

Soul Music?

One of the themes presented in this film claims a person is not defined by his memories. The plot revolves around this group of treacherous bald men who replace people's memories every 12 (or was it 24?) hours in order to learn whether our identities are governed by the sum of our experiences, or some sort of indelible intangible--a soul. The answer, we are told, is the latter. Unfortunately, the screenplay goes against all of that by defining its characters only in terms of what they do. Jennifer Connelly's character is seen as a lounge singer, an unfaithful wife, and a ticket girl. And even though we know she is the same person, it's only because she's the same actress. The character is written without a soul, we really only know her by her jobs and her costumes. Likewise, Rufus Sewell's character is supposed to prove his soul by maintaining an identity even after the bad guys fail to implant him with false memories. But, what is that soul? What is his nature? The only character trait he exhibits is his ability to look worried in any given situation.

This is a problem in the screenplay, but to a degree, it was a solvable one. You want something which can shed light on the true nature of characters while appearing in externally different guises? This sounds like a job for... a film score! Unfortunately, the filmmakers were apparently so concerned with using a "hip" style of music, no one bothered to wonder what they should do with it. Wouldn't it have been interesting if Jones had doled out specific instruments for each character, but rendered completely different themes for their various existences. Of if that's too Lethal Weapon for you, why not assign certain characters specific timbral registers (like giving William Hurt low range woodwinds, and Rufus Sewell mid-range brass) or even specific key centers (like giving Jennifer Connelly the key of A minor) to suggest an underlying consistency to their characters. With broad ideas like these, Jones could have used any styles of music he wanted in order to keep up with the switcheroo plot devices, while still illustrating the underlying permanence of the characters' identities. He could have saved (well, helped) a plot that fails to recognize its own themes.

Hex Mars the Spotting

As it is, most of the music in the film goes towards nothing much in particular. It's like a total-film ambience, completely unconcerned with the plot or themes of the film. To be honest, I started off thinking that the film was brilliantly spotted. The opening scenes come on with a kind of en media rez hyper-immediacy full of pulsing synths and fat string chords under images of nothing special--bathtubs, fishbowls, telephones. I thought it was an incredibly clever way of giving the audience the same kind of inexplicably driven sense as the characters. The compulsion was real, but we weren't sure why. It was governed by some sort of distant glazed-over goal, very similar to what the characters must feel when constantly waking up to new foggy memories, and going about routines they're not entirely sure they've really established.

However, an hour later, when I began to realize that they had crowbarred techno grooves indiscriminately behind anything and everything in the film, I started to see the spotting as a result of Jones grappling unsuccessfully with this style of music. There are times where the same rhythmic loop will go through three unrelated scenes without batting an eye. Perhaps the idea was to give the audience the sense that somewhere out there, something is happening. Evil is afoot. But, it's not like this idea would have gone underdeveloped without the music. The sun never shines here, buildings grow out of nowhere, pale men in bowlers patrol the streets. You can't musically reinforce a point that permeates the entire construction of the narrative, you can only repeat it. Dark City already gives the impression of an industrial hell. With the score, it just feels like the neighbors left the stereo on. Certainly, it was a difficult proposition for Jones. The film is filled with short, visually intense cutting. Is a composer better off reflecting this, or ignoring this? Neither, in my opinion--though Jones opted for the latter and scored through most everything. But why not just get out of the short dialogue ridden scenes? Again, the film was dripping with atmosphere to begin with, you don't need music to take on that responsibility.

Dark Music

So what about the music on its own? Many of the same problems seem to rear their heads here. Namely, Jones just doesn't sound comfortable working with the synth music. He's able to achieve some grooves here and there, but they're without detail--like so much time was put in to making it sound properly "techno" that they never got around to making any interesting samples or loops. In fact, I found that truncated, backwards electronic sound effect heard during the flashback sequences to be more interesting than anything in the music. What's more, none of these dull electronics have anything to do with the other, orchestral half of the score. One moment there will be a slashing bit of motivic 12/8 scoring for brass, then suddenly a moody snippet of drum machines. Where's the connection? Could symphonic percussion had played the same rhythms behind the brass before they're handed to the drum machines? Or could there have been a synth loop with the drum machine that includes pitch material from the brass? To me, at least, when electronics and orchestral music coexist, but don't relate, the finished product sounds like some sort of "Hooked on Film Music" experiment. The oddly timed editing in this film could have provided Jones an interesting palette to cut back and forth between differing styles of electronic and orchestral scoring with all sorts of strange connecting fibres. Instead, it just sounds like he had to remix a short orchestral score into a long electronic one.

So needless to say, Dark City's score disappointed me--not so much because of what it did, but because of what it failed to do. Not only did it have the opportunity to really add something to the story, but it was in the right position to push the boundaries of a still-emerging genre of film music. Unfortunately, it wasn't able to fully accomplish either. Better luck next time, I suppose.

Doug@filmscoremonthly.com