A middling soundtrack might remain part of the backdrop (as many do, really), but if done particularly well, a score can shuffle a few feet forward, extending a moment or a visual sequence. Many of the most memorable soundtracks aren't technically the best cinematic accouterments: They over-step, bully, transcend, tread on, and bleed through the moving image.
When it comes to film music, I'm nailed by cultural nostalgia, moved by the weird and the obvious-- say, Jesus & Mary Chain at the end of Lost in Translation. Too easy, but I once spent an entire summer listening to Darklands. I've never been to Japan and "Just Like Honey"'s on a different record, but that final whispered moment between the leads still taps and taps (and taps), overlapping with the feeling of leaning my head against a fan, hearing how it mutated the street noises, zoning out to "April Skies" anyway. Would it have been as cinematically successful if Coldplay blasted from the screen at that moment? Maybe, but I would've missed the shivers.
Of course, too much of a good thing can hurt. Occasionally, a resonance hovers so close to home it repels. For instance, Elliott Smith accompanying that Hollywood suicide attempt in The Royal Tenenbaums. I lived in Portland when he put out those early records; saw him all over the place with Heatmiser; had a girlfriend who cried listening to his stuff even then. Now? You can't listen to the stuff now-- or, at least, not easily. So it's painful when it's paired with something so cartoonish. All this to say: What's interesting about The Fountain soundtrack is just how uninteresting the music is, really. OK, that's not exactly right. When it swells and drives toward the end of "Holy Dead!", it's gorgeous. The windiness of "Death Is the Road to Awe", just before the percussion and choir pick up, is equally excellent. The repeated and echoing motifs? A fine touch. But I've concentrated hard on the minor chords, pressed "play" dozens of times, retread the bowing and kneeding and bubbling percussion, and it still doesn't do much more than stay perfectly within the lines of the film for which it was composed. It's a good, well-behaved soundtrack full of classicist, string-led flourishes. So, pretty, yes. Reminiscent of summers spent stocking shelves in the music section of Borders and helping old ladies locate the Lawrence of Arabia soundtrack? Hell yes.
The movement -- and it is a movement, always moving and propelling-- was written by ex-Pop Will Eat Itself member Clint Mansell, who also soundtracked Darren Aronofsky's Requiem For a Dream and Pi. Here, the 46 plaintive minutes of music are elegantly interpreted by the Kronos Quartet and Mogwai. Yes, that Mogwai. The Scottish mopes, along with bands like Godspeed You Black Emperor (adjust the exclamation point accordingly), are often referred to as "cinematic" because their songs move a certain way, pushing a path of easy dynamics. It can be interesting, for sure, but it's obvious: They churn up images via emotive rising/falling actions. If you own an iPod or a Walkman and take a journey to the corner bodega, the world feels 10 time more dramatic. In those cases, there's no need for a preexisting film: Your head becomes the flicker.
I guess that's the big letdown about this collection: Mogwai's outside albums would've been more compelling. What we have is so predetermined, so closed...so obviously a soundtrack. I prefer soundtracks for the nonexistent, where you're forced to conjure, or otherwise work for the image. Or, as mentioned way at the top, music in a film that has a life for you outside the film. If you watch The Fountain enough, untangle its meaning, learn to love it like a friend, then this music might become that emotional headlock. But a hunch: I could play 10 other similar soundtracks and you'd have a difficult time passing the Pepsi Challenge.
