The Problem of Movie Soundtracks
Note: This is my contribution to the Korean Cinema Blogathon week. If you are here because of that campaign, welcome to Korean Indie.
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So a few years ago I was watching Choi Min-shik’s Springtime (꽃피는 봄이 오면), a movie about a failed jazz musician who gets roped into a high school teaching job in a rural mining town. It is not Choi’s best movie and is more than a little derivative of Brassed Off, but it was pleasant enough for the most part.
But one point the movie hammers home, over and over again, is that the reason Choi’s character is a failure as a jazz musician is because he is too good, too much of a purist. If only he would sell out and be more commercial, he might have had a good career, but, no, he insists on only playing “real” jazz. After hearing this kind of talk for 15 minutes or so, Choi finally gets on stage to play a concert—and he plays Chuck Mangione’s “Feels So Good.” Seriously. About the most mainstream, middle-of-the-road, non-jazz song ever written (pleasant enough, but it’s sure not “real” jazz, whatever that is).
For me, my interest in Korea was first about music. Sure, there have been a lot of great Korean movies over the years and the film business has been major part of my job since I started writing professionally, but for me Korean music came first, in particular its indie rock scene. From my early days in Korea, back around 1996 or so, I used to try to check out all different kinds of music, from the hair-metal of Mahatma to the quirky alt-rock of Hwang Shin Hye Band. Remember, this was before we had the Internet to help find things, and the English-language press in Korea rarely mentioned anything about indie music, so it used to be pretty tough for a fobby Westerner like myself to find out much about this sort of thing. But I did the best I could, and gradually I discovered that there was quite a lot of great music being made at the time.
So when Korean movies began to take off, pulling in good money in Korea and big awards abroad, I thought naturally these two media would start to help each other. But I was wrong. Very, very wrong. I was amazed how often music would be the weakest link in many Korean movies.
The most common problem (especially in “epics,” like Shiri or Taeguki) was simple excessive orchestration, as if someone had force-fed John Williams two pots of coffee, a bag of sugar, and a half-dozen hits of crystal meth. Especially as the emotional high points of the film hit, the soundtrack would pound with relentless symphonic histrionics. For some reason, Tube really comes to mind here. It’s like the filmmaker does not trust the power of his story and instead feels the need to shout at the audience: “You! Will! Feel! Epic! Sadness!”
And then there was a phase, especially around the middle of last decade, when way too many Korean films went Japanese for their music, featuring quirky, European-carnival-esque music. Some were quite good and a good match for the movies, but far too many were basically filler and rehashes. (How fitting that this year’s logo for the Korean Cinema Blogathon features an image from Bittersweet Life, one of the worst offenders).
Maybe others will think I am nitpicking, but to me, music can make a huge difference to a movie. Quentin Tarantino’s movies have made some amazing use of music (indeed, sometimes the music has been the best part of his films). But Tarantino using the Seventies, Nina Simone version of “Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” was an iconic part of Kill Bill. Kim Jee-woon’s use of the same song in The Good, the Bad, the Weird was merely derivative. Sometimes referencing a great soundtrack can make for an amusing parody, but most of the time it just tells the audience that the filmmaker is not very creative. Tarantino, Guy Ritchie, Wong Kar Wai – too many Korean filmmakers have worn their creative inspirations too openly, rehashing others instead of trying their own thing.
The strange thing is that Korean cinema does have a good history of soundtracks, especially in the 1970s when hit songs could inspire entire films. The Green Apple (푸른 사과) and Heavenly Homecoming to the Stars (별들의 고향) soundtracks, largely written by Shin Joong-hyun, are classics. More recent South Korean movies like The Contact (접속) or Tell Me Something (텔 미 썸딩) could surprise with songs by Tom Waits or Nick Cave. Jang Sun-woo used Dalparan on Bad Movie and Lies, and Kim Jee-woon had Baik Hyun-jhin on The Foul King. Even the North Korean movie Thaw (1988) had a surprisingly hip soundtrack, using Isaac Hayes’ classic theme from Shaft in a key moment of the film.
There have been a few good uses of modern music in Korean movies more recently. Anna talked about Apollo 18 in the recent Drifting Away. Even the terrible flop Who R U gave us Deli Spice’s classic song “Chau Chau.” But for the most part, Korean filmmakers have been way too derivative and obvious with their soundtracks. With so many incredibly talented musicians in Korea today, in rock, pop, folk, classical and more, I think the time has come for more filmmakers to use those musicians to make movies with more spark and originality.
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I thought Who R U was a great movie! Had expected it to have fared well in Korea when it was released, but if it didn’t that would explain why none of my Korea movie loving friends have heard of it.
As for Drifting Away, I should’ve mentioned the score for the most part was not super exciting, but not so bad as to take anything away from the movie. “High Stepper” was quite the contrast to just about everything else in there, so I really think “Warm” would’ve been a better fit. But then again “Warm” doesn’t have the same super high rock enery the scene to “High Stepper” portrayed, so perhaps it was for the better even if it seemed a bit random.
I agree that many Korean soundtracks have been less than subtle, especially when it comes to the score, but I’ve often just come to ignore a lot of that scoring and only really take notice when it becomes interesting, like Lee Byungwoo’s haunting theme to A TALE OF TWO SISTERS or Jung Sang Hoon’s work on BREATHLESS. I actually really like several soundtracks and there are some pretty good musicians working in them, like Bang Joonsuk (and the other members of 복숭아), Tearliner, and so forth. And, while that’s not to say that they can’t always avoid the siren call of overdoing it from time to time, I actually came to discover Korean music through film soundtracks. I wouldn’t have ever listened to Sanullim if not for PEPPERMINT CANDY nor Kim Chooja if not for SECRET SUNSHINE.
Perhaps a “favorite soundtrack” post is in order?
I think having good musicians as music director is key to make a good soundtrack. I was actually planning to write about both Tearliner and Jung Sang Hoon this week ^^
As for favorite soundtrack, that’d be a quite boring post coming from me. When limited to movies it’d be The Classic, My Sassy Girl and Windstruck in no specific order. Kwak Jae Young always had the job done remarkably well.
Hi R-F: Thanks much for the comment. (You, too, Anna).
Certainly there have been some great soundtracks over the years. But I do think this is one area is which Korean movies have been sub-par (at least in comparison to all the other ways they have excelled).
I totally forgot Kim Choo-ja’s music appeared in Secret Sunshine. But Lee Chang-dong in general is one of Korea’s smartest filmmakers, so I am not surprised.
Favorite soundtrack? That is not a bad idea at all … if perhaps a little overwhelming.
I agree with so much of this post. Music/soundtracks can absolutely have a hand in making or breaking a movie for me, or at least influence my opinion of a film. I’m a cinema studies major and the reason why I started to love movies in the first place was thanks to some films with ridiculously good soundtracks that “transitioned” my pre-existing obsession with music to a different art form. (I love Tarantino’s song selections too, esp in Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill – I also love Good Will Hunting [RIP Elliott Smith], some of Wes Anderson’s stuff, Garden State, Amelie, Ghost World, The Virgin Suicides, Alexandre Desplat, Maurice Jarre in Doctor Zhivago, Michael Nyman in The Piano, Joe Hisaishi in Studio Ghibli films… the list is endless!)
I first heard Sanullim in Peppermint Candy too. I think I came across Humming Urban Stereo and 3rd Line Butterfly via films, and the two are some of my absolute favourite K-Indie bands. Also, I don’t know if it’s just me, but sometimes hearing the song played in its trailer or via a short clip of the movie on Youtube can influence my decision to watch the film, or at least how I feel about the film before going in to watch. In that way I’m making the assumption that the film will capture/elaborate on the song vibes and hoping for the best. I solely want to watch this movie based on the song “Sophie Marceau” by Humming Urban Stereo (http://movie.daum.net/moviedetail/moviedetailMain.do?movieId=44684). A film can really add dimension to how I respond to a song.
I must add that some Korean TV shows/K-dramas have some really eye-opening or memorable soundtracks. Granted I rarely watch any current ones, but I did see all of Coffee Prince from a few years ago, which had a ton of songs and got me into Loveholic, The Melody, Tearliner, Lucid Fall, Casker, and Japanese bands Depapepe and FreeTEMPO. Dramabeans did a really good post on the Coffee Prince soundtrack (http://www.dramabeans.com/about/media-stuff/cp-unofficial-soundtrack/). Dae Jang Geum (Jewel in the Palace) also had a very good soundtrack imo, though it’s totally different from the Coffee Prince one.
I remember some older K-dramas having very memorable song selections too. I was young, but even as a child I knew that SBS’s Morae Sigye (Sandglass) had songs that became so iconic that many Koreans equate the song to the drama itself. This noted in the “Trivia” section in the Sandglass wiki article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandglass_%28TV_series%29). Same with 그대 그리고 나 (You and I) which had a noteworthy soundtrack and imo the best use of the Lou Christie song “Beyond the Blue Horizon” (http://ko.wikipedia.org/wiki/%EA%B7%B8%EB%8C%80_%EA%B7%B8%EB%A6%AC%EA%B3%A0_%EB%82%98).
Phew, sorry this is super long. Some of my favourite Korean film soundtracks include: Oldboy, …ing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06jqFCA2QLs), and Lady Vengeance. The Lady Vengeance soundtrack is fantastic and I can guarantee that many readers of KoreanIndie will like it. It should be easier to find on the net because it used to be available for free download on the film website. Nevertheless I own the physical copy of the soundtrack CD too because it has awesome artwork and film info in a beautiful package.
Jenny:
Thanks for all those thoughts. That’s a big reply. ^^
Funny you should mention …ING. The filmmakers originally wanted to use Radiohead’s “Creep” as the main theme, but were not able to license it, so instead hired 3rd Line Butterfly to write something that felt similar. (If I recall correctly, of course). But I think it was a pretty fortunate screw-up, as 3rd Line Butterfly’s original music is more interesting than hearing “Creep” yet again.
Perhaps a “Five Soundtracks to Listen To” post with contributions from the Korean Indie crew? Well, either way, you’ve gotten my gears turning now. Maybe I’ll write about my favorite film soundtracks for the Korean Cinema Blogathon.
Now that sounds like fun! I could do something with that! Mark?
I can’t speak for the Korean music scene as I don’t keep abreast of it but I’ve very much enjoyed the music in many Korean films. Those distinct melancholy scores from Oldboy, Save the Green Planet, even Children… (a mediocre films with a great score) and yes, A Bittersweet Life. It’s true that I don’t often notice very interesting current music in the country’s films but perhaps that is changing.
Last year’s Sunny had a wonderful soundtrack which drew on popular Korean music from its setting, the 80s. Also Park Chan-wook’s latest, the wonderful short Night Fishing, opens with a performance by UhUhBoo Project.
In any case besides the great scores, there is a lot of room for improvement.