Indie movie musicals
Whether it’s helping Dorothy follow the yellow brick road, celebrating Danny’s confession to Sandy that she’s the one that he wants or sympathizing with the cartoon mermaid Ariel and her longing to be part of that world, many audiences have long accepted song in cinema.
But the world of independent film is now finding a too wide audience for the musical genre. Unlike their showy Hollywood studio counterparts, these indies don’t have big-budget dance numbers or characters who spontaneously break into song. These characters know when they’re singing, and when they do break into song, it’s for a purpose — usually for a performance-within-a-performance.
The newest of the bunch is Sundance movie God Help the Girl, coming to theaters Sept. 5, which centers on a pop band. The movie’s music, written by Belle and Sebastian frontman Stuart Murdoch, is heard in performance only. But the trend didn’t start with God Help the Girl. It began with 2006 indie flick Once.
Once tells the story of two musicians (Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová of band The Swell Season) who find each other by happenstance and, in doing so, find themselves and their artistry. The sleeper hit took home Best Original Song at the 2008 Academy Awards for the ballad “Falling Slowly” — which the characters perform in the movie and worked as a standalone top-100 single.
Once has spawned several more indie “moviecals,” in which music is heard only in performance.
In 2010, the Toronto International Film Festival premiered Janie Jones, a film about a girl (Abigail Breslin, Perfect Sisters) and her estranged father (Alessandro Nivola, American Hustle) meeting for the first time and bonding over, you guessed it, their mutual love of music.
The Coen brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis, another tale of a struggling musician, came to theaters in 2013. Only a handful of songs off the soundtrack are original, scattered among a number of cover songs, but the film received the Golden Globes nomination for Best Original Song.
Just this summer, indie movie musical Begin Again, starring A-listers Keira Knightly, Mark Ruffalo and Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine, won wide acclaim from critics.
The trend isn’t just for stories of struggling musicians, either. For the more Glee-inclined, there’s the little-known 2008 flick Were The World Mine. Despite the film’s fantastical elements — the bullied, gay main character puts a magic spell over his school, turning his tormentors gay — the songs throughout occur overwhelmingly in dream sequences and school play performances.
There are plenty of reasons why this brand of independent, more self-aware movie musicals is so popular. For one, people often go to the theater to see something they can relate to, and these movie musicals don’t require them to suspend their disbelief for an hour and a half. The films’ musical genre tend to break away from the typical show tunes. Because of plot circumstances, songs tend to sound far more like radio hits than movie sound bite.
It’s a formula familiar to fans of Glee, which has been using songs for performances-within-shows for five seasons.
That’s not to say the “spontaneously break into song and dance” musical is dead. Several stage musicals have recently made their way to the silver screen, most notably 2012’s Les Misérables. In its wake, Hollywood has spurred on an onslaught of movie musical adaptations, some slated for release this holiday season.
Yet, critics and audiences alike continue to favor the independent movie musical films and their more apparent sense of realism. After all, critical acclaim for Begin Again outstripped Clint Eastwood’s attempt to bring Broadway hit Jersey Boys to the silver screen.
Less conventionally, independent movie musicals have found their way from screen to stage and encountered massive success. In 2011, Once made its Broadway stage debut, garnering Tony Awards for Best Direction of a Musical, Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical and Best Musical, and the Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album.
And so, with God Help the Girl’s release, the trend continues.
Musicals, grounded in reality or not, still serve the same purpose. Whether characters are swinging from lampposts and singin’ in the rain or strumming a new tune on their trusty old guitar, music plays the same important role it always has in cinema and beyond: making an audience feel something.
