{"id":18340,"date":"2022-05-25T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-05-25T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=18340"},"modified":"2024-03-02T21:12:47","modified_gmt":"2024-03-03T05:12:47","slug":"the-musical-moments-and-motifs-of-danny-boyle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/the-musical-moments-and-motifs-of-danny-boyle\/","title":{"rendered":"The Musical Moments and Motifs of Danny Boyle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When Danny Boyle was announced as the series director for Pistol<\/em>, which depicts the rise and fall of the iconic British band the Sex Pistols, he was such a natural fit that it was surprising he hadn\u2019t made anything about them before now. Over the past three decades, Boyle has cast an irreverent eye on British culture, showing his home country from the perspective of seemingly marginal figures like the buskers, bike couriers, drug addicts, and cute kids you might pass on the streets. His visually engaging style\u2014which encompasses shaky camera movement and stroboscopic editing\u2014combined with his frequent casting of character actors gives his films a compelling quality. Even if you don\u2019t like the characters, you\u2019re definitely curious about what happens to them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boyle frequently uses pop music not only to set a mood, but also to locate the film in a specific place and time. His soundtracks draw on British bands, solo artists, and DJs beloved by discerning audiences, and his incorporation of trendy groups and genres speaks to both the era in which he made his films and to contemporary audiences. How has Boyle\u2019s handle on pop music evolved since the release of Trainspotting<\/em>, and what can we expect from the upcoming release of Pistol<\/em>? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trainspotting<\/em> marked Boyle\u2019s critical and commercial breakthrough. Adapted from Irvine Welsh\u2019s novel, the film depicted a ragtag group of junkies led by Mark \u201cRent Boy\u201d Renton (Ewen McGregor) as they grapple with their heroin addictions, attempt to kick, and engage in criminal activity. Unlike previous films about drug abuse, like 1995\u2019s The Basketball Diaries<\/em>, that Welsh dismissed as \u201cpo-faced piece(s) of social realism<\/a>\u201d, Trainspotting<\/em> has a giddy tone that allows viewers to understand the appeal of addiction as well as the toll it takes on those in its thrall. Boyle\u2019s sensory-overloaded visuals, editor Masahiro Hirakubo\u2019s fast cutting, and the occasionally surreal imagery\u2014like Renton levitating after a potent fix\u2014bring the viewer inside the mind of the addict without judging the characters. You can practically imagine Renton turning to the camera and saying \u201ccan you believe<\/em> they let us get away with this?\u201d in his Glaswegian drawl. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Britpop was gaining popularity in the early months of 1996, and the soundtrack for Trainspotting<\/em> reflected the cultural shift happening among British Gen-Xers. Boyle and music consultant Allen Dam placed needle drops by up-and-coming bands like Blur, Elastica, Pulp, and Sleeper in key scenes. References to druggy musicians like David Bowie and Lou Reed dapple Irvine Welsh\u2019s prose like blood splatters on a shooting gallery wall, but Boyle\u2019s use of the music\u2014in addition to Renton and Sick Boy\u2019s discussions about Lou Reed\u2019s solo career\u2014feel like a metacommentary on the nature of addiction and survival. Listening to the strings from the beginning of \u201cPerfect Day\u201d swell as Renton sinks into a shag rug during an overdose reinforces the cocoon-like comfort of opiates, just as Reed\u2019s own cycles of addiction and recovery suggest one potential fate awaiting our hapless cast. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Trainspotting<\/em> came to a close, the final credits rolled to the pulsating strains of \u201cBorn Slippy\u201d by Underworld. While the popularity of electronica happened concurrently with Britpop, using a drum-and-bass track under the closing credits sounded futuristic after a movie filled with guitar-based rock music. It also offered a way forward for Boyle, who would collaborate with Underworld on the score for Sunshine<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boyle returned to England for 28 Days Later<\/em>, a zombie movie that contrasted sharply with the flashier style of Trainspotting<\/em>. Gone were the color-saturated, deliberately composed frames, the shuddering edits, the endlessly quotable script. In its place were wide, washed-out shots of deserted London streets. When an animal rights group liberates a monkey with the violence-inducing virus Rage, they set off a global pandemic and a societal collapse. Jim (Cillian Murphy), a bike messenger who suffered a concussion at the start of the film, awakens from a coma 28 days after the start of the pandemic, dodging fast-moving zombies in search of uninfected potential allies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A hush falls over the film throughout the first act, mirroring the main characters\u2019 cautious movements. John Murphy\u2019s score has a strong sense of volume, slowly building from muted cymbal rolls to serrated guitar crescendos that mirror the protagonists\u2019 increasing sense of dread. His use of techniques that mimic diegetic sound\u2014like the two-note piano riff at the start of \u201cIn This House–In a Heartbeat<\/a>\u201d that sounds like an emergency alarm\u2014allows the score to build from the echoing soundscape of the film in an organic way. While Murphy\u2019s score works the way a standard film score does, his spare arrangements, looped percussion, and clean, somewhat atonal guitar parts are in conversation with Radiohead\u2019s groundbreaking Kid A<\/em> album, which explored a similarly dystopian mood to 28 Days Later<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Murphy would collaborate with Boyle again on his next film, Millions<\/em>, a fairy tale about a well-meaning little boy who finds a duffle bag full of pound notes in the days before England switched from the pound to the Euro. His twinkly score, with its harp motifs and subtle brass charts, emphasizes the fabulist tone of the film and plays upon the religious preoccupations of its angelic protagonist, Damian (Alex Etel). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anthony (Lewis Owen McGibbon), Damian\u2019s older brother, has less charitable plans for the money Damian has discovered, which the music in his key scenes reflects. When Anthony tells his friends about his brother\u2019s windfall and promises to cut them in on it, the boys strut across the playground in matching Oakley sunglasses to the tune of \u201cHitsville UK\u201d by the Clash. The contrast between the boys\u2019 enthusiasm about their ill-gotten gains and the song\u2019s lyrics\u2014about an indie band gradually surrendering to the evils of the record industry\u2014serves as a subtle warning for what Anthony could become. In a later scene, one of Anthony\u2019s friends takes Damian aside to explain to him how he probably ended up with the money and why it could be risky for the brothers to keep it. A color-saturated, speedily edited robbery sequence unfolds to the tune \u201cHysteria\u201d, which had been a hit for long-running Britpop band Muse in the year when Millions<\/em> was ostensibly set. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Millions<\/em> would become the first film Boyle directed that was included on the Disney+ streaming service. The streaming giant would not pick up the broadcast rights for T2 Trainspotting<\/em>, his next pop music-infused film set in England and Scotland. The sequel to Trainspotting<\/em> picks up at midlife for Renton and his gang, who are experiencing the kind of midlife struggles you\u2019d expect from the previous film. The opening scene, in which now-46-year-old Renton suffers a heart attack while running on a treadmill to High Contrast\u2019s Underworld-influenced song \u201cShotgun Mouthwash<\/a>\u201d, establishes an accurate tone for the rest of the film. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Boyle\u2019s visual approach for the film reflects the way life has passed his protagonists by. The colors are a little more washed out, the framing a little more standard, the editing a bit slower. This middle-aged hipster quality extends to the soundtrack. A few songs and bands from Trainspotting<\/em> carry over into the sequel, underscoring the film\u2019s feeling of sour nostalgia and lost time. In one poignant shot, Renton visits his childhood bedroom and drops the needle on a vinyl copy of Lust for Life<\/em>, only to remove it in seeming disgust. When he returns to his father\u2019s home at the end of the film, he listens to the song all the way through, dancing in his bedroom and seeming to make peace with his past. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The soundtrack for Trainspotting<\/em> reinforced Britpop\u2019s image as a genre predominantly made by white men. Public perception of England has become more diverse since the mid-1990s, and Boyle\u2019s use of music reflects this shift. In addition to the proto-punk bands like Blondie and Iggy and the Stooges that appeared on the soundtrack to the first Trainspotting<\/em>, archival acts like the ska trio Fun Boy Three get prominent placement in the film. The all-female quartet Wolf Alice and the multiracial Edinburgh band Young Fathers also pop up at key moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After working with cult bands and musicians on his soundtracks, Boyle took on the most iconic British band of all time in his most recent feature film, Yesterday<\/em>. Working from a simple concept\u2014what if the Beatles had been almost entirely forgotten in our time?\u2014scenarist Richard Curtis tells the story of struggling singer\/songwriter Jack Malik (Himesh Patel), who comes out of a worldwide blackout\/power failure to find out that the Beatles have been wiped from popular memory. As one of three people who remembers the Fab Four, Jack begins passing off some of their songs as his originals, swiftly rocketing to fame after Ed Sheeran (playing himself in a mumbly, charisma-free performance) sees him playing on local TV. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea for Yesterday<\/em> has some interesting implications that Curtis\u2019s screenplay picks up only to immediately dismiss, like Jack\u2019s bout with impostor syndrome in a nightmare on the set of The Late Late Show with James Corden<\/em>. It also establishes a major ground rule (imagining a world in which the Beatles don\u2019t exist) only to contradict itself by featuring music that couldn\u2019t have been made without the Beatles setting the precedent (as with the grade-school talent show in which Jack plays \u201cWonderwall\u201d). Instead, the story settles into the squeaky-cleanest rise and fall of an up-and-coming talent, complete with the kind of romcom plot Curtis could write in his sleep. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Boyle has depicted the bands in his movies in a critical light\u2014as with Renton and  Sick Boy\u2019s discussion of Lou Reed\u2019s solo career in Trainspotting<\/em>\u2014he seems to fawn over his musical subjects. This is somewhat understandable with the Beatles, who wrote some great songs outside of their larger-than-life cultural footprint, but his inability to depict the sensitive-yet-sexed up dude with an acoustic guitar trend of the 2000s and 2010s in even the most slightly satirical light becomes a bit hard to take as the movie goes on. Then again, with the frequent needle drops of Sheeran\u2019s \u201cShape of You\u201d, he has finally found something more unpleasant than Trainspotting<\/em>\u2019s Worst Toilet in Scotland<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The impending release of Pistol<\/em> finds Boyle coming full circle with his career. Like Trainspotting<\/em>, the series focuses on a scruffy group of antiheroes operating at the edges of proper society, and, judging by the trailer, its giddy, loose-limbed energy matches that of his earlier work. His deliberate balance of empathy and irreverence will serve the Pistols well: \u201cI love (John) Lydon for what he does and I don\u2019t want him to like (the series)\u2014I want him to attack it,\u201d the filmmaker told The Guardian<\/em> in a recent interview<\/a>. This could be a return to form for Boyle, and an opportunity to revisit an iconic band in a contemporary light. \"\"\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/9KhxwG0eCiE\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With his new Sex Pistols series on the runway, we take a look at the prolific director’s career-long deployment of pop music. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":607,"featured_media":18342,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1381],"tags":[34,626],"class_list":["post-18340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","tag-music","tag-television"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/607"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18340"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21969,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18340\/revisions\/21969"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}