Over at About Last Night, Terry Teachout drives some traffic here to the nosebleed seats of the blogosphere [wretched term] and does a much better job of talking about Clint Eastwood's score for Mystic River than I ever could. Especially because he doesn't mention Paint Your Wagon even once.
Plus, there's this great bit from film composer Bernard Hermann:
I feel that music on the screen can seek out and intensify the inner thoughts of the characters. It can invest a scene with terror, grandeur, gaiety or misery. It can propel narrative swiftly forward, or slow it down. It often lifts mere dialogue into the realm of poetry. Finally, it is the communicating link between the screen and the audience, reaching out and enveloping all into one single experience.
In the case of Mystic River, it's sort of a schmaltzy treacly flood of molasses [for which an appropriateness argument might be made, given the film's Boston locale]...
On a personal note, I'm still waiting for mobile phones in the US to catch up with Europe and Asia so that one day, when my mobile gets a call, my ringtone will be Hermann's gorgeous circular theme from Vertigo. A cinetrix can dream...
