“Music is the universal language of mankind,” declared Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the well-loved poet and philosopher. Stevie Wonder, an American musical icon, reiterated this statement, saying, “Music is a world within itself; it is a language we all understand.” Throughout our class’ study of nine Hollywood films and their musical scores, my appreciation for music’s communicational ability has deepened immensely. Music holds the power, over even text and sight, to influence the emotions of an audience. This language that is sung or played instrumentally speaks to the core of an individual’s being, inspiring empathy in the most intimate part of one’s soul. Empathetic music in the films of this course successfully encourages viewers to adopt the characters’ points of view. Furthermore, in two of the films we examined, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and The Mission (1986), the stories’ plots demonstrate music’s communicational ability. These films exhibit how a simple melody can weaken even the most rigid cultural barriers, encouraging intercultural collaboration.
Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, enhanced by John Williams’ ingenious score, reveals that the secret to (literally) universal communication is, indeed, music. In the film, a simple five-tone pattern fosters communication between human and alien life. This re-mi-do-do(lower octave)-so melody flourishes in the famous communication scene of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (film clip embedded below). First, the Americans play the five-note pattern a few times using a synthesizer on an oboe setting. Then, the aliens’ mothership repeats the tune back to the humans with the low, powerful timbre of a tuba. The aliens proceed to perform an extensive variation on the simple melody. The humans and extraterrestrial life sing first alternatingly and then simultaneously, creating a strange web of fascinatingly peculiar music. Notes fly rapidly from both machines, from both worlds, as their rhythms intertwine and their tones harmonize in a bizarre but cheerful way. This musical dialogue initiated a friendly encounter and cultural exchange between the two life forms from different universes. The fundamental five-note melody encouraged and enabled communication between worlds.
Similarly, in Roland Joffe’s The Mission, the lead character, Jesuit missionary Father Gabriel, plays a simple tune, a bit more complex and much more pleasant than in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, to earn the trust of the native South American Guarani people for whom he hopes to establish a mission. The embedded film clip below shows Gabriel playing a captivatingly sweet melody on his oboe in order to introduce himself to the Guarani tribe. At first, the Guarani are suspicious and surround Father Gabriel, pointing their arrows toward him threateningly. One warrior seems to ask Father Gabriel to continue playing, so he nervously proceeds. A bitter warrior breaks the oboe in half, but another apologetically attempts to fix it. When this warrior invites Father Gabriel to the tribe’s home, a non-diegetic oboe resumes the gorgeous melody and the orchestra emits a glorious, slowly descending accompaniment, rejoicing in this successful communication between cultures. This encounter marks a significant moment of change for the Guarani people as they accept Father Gabriel and, therefore, Jesus Christ into their lives. At the clip’s end, a narrator speaks on the success of Gabriel’s oboe: “With an orchestra, the Jesuits could have subdued the whole continent.” In The Mission, music enabled Gabriel to eliminate fear, inspire acceptance, promote understanding, and communicate Christian love with a previously unreachable tribe, demonstrating the musical language’s universality.
In addition to diegetic music’s occasional participation in the plot of a movie, film scores often function empathetically, molding to match the fluctuating emotions of the characters on screen, to communicate the characters’ points of view to the audience. The creation of musical point of view is evident in each film that our class examined, but I found its presence most astonishing in Elmer Bernstein’s score for To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). The ever-wise Atticus Finch once said to his children, Jem and Scout, in the film, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” Bernstein’s score allows the film’s audience to take Atticus’ advice; as his music envelops us, it lifts the veil of adulthood from our eyes, our ears, and our hearts as instruments and harmonies guide us through the youthful minds of Jem and Scout. The use of simple instrumentation, especially piano, harp, and flute, as well as sweet, uncomplicated melodies symbolize the innocence of Jem and Scout’s thoughts as the community around them battles and tragically succumbs to prejudice. To further enhance this musical point of view, Bernstein’s score reflects the incomplex emotions of children. There is clear distinction between music that is meant to invoke positive emotion and music that is meant to invoke negative emotion, just as Scout and Jem have clear ideas of what is right and what is wrong, and just as the picture is filmed in black and white. Every emotion that the two experience is clearly and effectively communicated through Bernstein’s score. His compassionate music speaks a language that words and pictures cannot, putting viewers “into Jem and Scout’s skin” and creating a heartwarming empathy for the children of To Kill a Mockingbird within its audience.
The plots of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The Mission blatantly examine music’s effectiveness in communicating between cultures, but, like To Kill a Mockingbird, all nine film scores studied in this class subtly demonstrate music’s effectiveness in communicating emotion. The films’ empathetic scores consistently held great influence over the emotions of the audience; the music conveyed with sound what could not be expressed visually or verbally. These observations reaffirmed my belief in the truth of composer Jean Sibelius’ quote, “Music begins where the possibilities of language and sight end.” Music in film extends beyond the visual and logical, stirring the deepest emotions within viewers and greatly influencing the audience’s perception of its characters, settings, and plot events.
emilymaeosborne 