The ‘May December’ Conundrum
Context is everything, so using Michel Legrand’s score from another film undercuts the artistry of composer and filmmaker
TAKING AN OLD FILM SCORE and dropping it into a new film is “like wearing somebody else’s underwear,” veteran composer Earle Hagen used to say.
Hagen, the Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning composer of such classic themes as “The Andy Griffith Show,” “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and “The Mod Squad,” would have been appalled by the musical choices in Netflix’s “May December.”
A scene from that film, with Julianne Moore opening her refrigerator door to a melodramatic piano cue, has gone viral. It’s a funny moment if you don’t recognize that music.
But if you do, like thousands of film buffs around the world, then it’s either cringe-worthy or just head-scratching. The music in question is Michel Legrand’s score for “The Go-between,” a 1971 English cinema classic directed by Joseph Losey from a script by renowned playwright Harold Pinter.
“The Go-between” was a period romantic drama that starred Alan Bates and Julie Christie and has, over the years, been hailed as “one of the world’s great films” and “Losey’s masterpiece,” among other praise. It won the Palme d’or at Cannes that year.
Legrand’s score — classically structured as a theme and 11 variations for two pianos and orchestra, reflecting his training at the Paris Conservatory — is among the greatest works of the French composer, conductor, pianist and singer, who died in 2019.
And while other Legrand movie scores (“The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” “Summer of ’42,” “Yentl”) and popular songs (“The Windmills of Your Mind,” “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?”) may be more famous, “The Go-between” is considered among his masterpieces.
He often performed the entire 21-minute suite in concert, playing one of the pianos himself.
Context is everything. Legrand designed the music specifically for “The Go-between.” It is a powerful presence throughout the 1971 film as an impressionable schoolboy (Dominic Guard) delivers love notes from an aristocratic woman (Christie) to a tenant farmer (Bates), eventually leading to tragedy.
This, of course, has nothing to do with “May December,” loosely based on the true 1990s story of a schoolteacher who had an affair with a sixth grader; Moore plays the woman and Natalie Portman is the actress who is about to play her in a movie.
Repurposing film music — especially classic film music — is never a good idea. When Michel Hazanavicius did it in “The Artist,” placing Bernard Herrmann’s music from “Vertigo” against a climactic scene, an outraged Kim Novak ran an ad in Variety declaring: “I want to report a rape. I feel as if my body, or at least my body of work, has been violated.”
She was voicing the complaints of thousands of film buffs who were distracted, mystified and annoyed by the presence of music that was created for, and is inextricable from, Hitchcock’s masterpiece. As one critic stated at the time, “It yanks you out of one film and places you in the mindset of another.”
Sci-fi buffs are still irritated, 44 years later, about Ridley Scott’s unfortunate choice to use excerpts from Jerry Goldsmith’s 1963 score for “Freud” in “Alien,” instead of the new score Goldsmith had written for him.
“May December” director Todd Haynes has benefited enormously from the fine music that composers have written for him in the past. Elmer Bernstein’s music for “Far From Heaven” and Carter Burwell’s for “Carol” were Oscar-nominated, and Burwell’s music for “Mildred Pierce” won an Emmy.
And the irony of the “May December” score is that, when composer Marcelo Zarvos is allowed to depart from the Legrand music, that music is effective. Had the rest of the score been original, it would have felt like it belonged solely to the film — not an off-putting, second-hand use of music.
Stanley Kubrick’s famous use of classical music excerpts in “2001: A Space Odyssey” is something else. Those pieces weren’t designed as an artistic element of another film and didn’t have prior cinematic associations.
Composers craft their scores specifically for the story at hand; it’s a commission for an original piece of work — in this case, Legrand’s was a brilliant score. It shouldn’t be treated as some kind of a commodity to be bought, sold and traded around.
All that does is cheapen the new film. Like wearing somebody else’s underwear.
THOUGH THERE ARE STILL those who view animation primarily as a kids or family form of entertainment, over the last year many of the most challenging, risky stories have been told by the modern masters of animation.
Films like “Suzume,” “The Peasants” and “The Boy and the Heron” have all been lauded for taking on compelling stories that often attract more adult audiences or even becoming crossover hits that draw diverse viewers. Makoto Shinkai’s “Suzume” earned well over $300 million in international box office. “The Peasants,” helmed by DK Welchman and Hugh Welchman, tells the story of a young woman and her controversial choices, and is based on a much-loved Polish novel. The film became a huge hit in Poland and is now attracting international attention. Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Boy and the Heron” delves deep into Japanese mythology and has earned over $100 million at the global box office as of October 2023.
Toshio Suzuki, co-founder and president of Studio Ghibli, has been a longtime collaborator and producer of Miyazaki’s films. He was especially moved by the latest film and supports the idea of an auteur working in animation to make a deeply personal statement.
“When Miyazaki came and showed me the first 20 minutes of the storyboards [for “The Boy and the Heron”], I knew that this one was going to be something very special,” says Suzuki. “I decided then that I am going to put all the money and time in this film to support his creativity because I thought at the time that this was going to be his last film. This is an autobiographical film, but the audience doesn’t necessarily have to know which parts are autobiographical for him. It was a process for him to reflect on his life. The protagonist is based on himself and then all the other characters that appear are based on people that he knew who supported him throughout his career. But it’s not necessary for the audience to know exactly who they are because the audience will relate to it in their own way and apply it to their own lives.”
Suzuki believes he and Miyazaki may be able to make one more film together, given their advanced ages (Miyazaki is 82, Suzuki is 75) and how long it takes to make one of the helmer’s 2D masterpieces.
“Miyazaki was able to do a film that captures his life from the time when he was a boy and how he came of age,” says Suzuki. “He’s very happy with what he’s accomplished. He’s not worried about how this film will be positioned or reviewed in terms of his career. That’s for writers, journalists and the next generation to figure out. He’s just happy with what he was able to say with this film.”
Deep dives into challenging material can pay big dividends for animated films like “The Peasants,” based on the Nobel Prize-winning novel of the same name. The book is often required reading for children in Poland. DK and Hugh Welchman decided to focus their story on a young woman who
scandalizes her village by having an affair with a married man. The reactions of the villagers reflect on the destructive forces of gossip, judgment and revenge. Done in a style similar to their previous film, “Loving Vincent,” the film evokes watercolor paintings and fluid movements.
“There is a connection to work for these people in this story,” says DK. “It’s almost like a religion for these people because the land is so important for them and there’s a connection to forming groups for strength too. So, there’s a nasty side of the people, a side of the people that is very characteristic of Slavic nature ... it’s kind of dangerous because that’s what happened in the past when some people were persecuted. When the group feels so strongly against something, then you must have someone to blame. It’s very rooted in human nature and it’s nothing to be proud of, but it’s important to talk about. There are good sides and bad sides of these people in the story that I think are very connected with us in modern times. We see these things continue to happen. And the audiences sometimes struggle with this character because they think she doesn’t make typically feminist choices, but I think that’s what makes them want to see her. They ask themselves what they would do [in her situation].”
The filmmakers decided to stay with a style like their previous film because it felt right for the time period of the story, which was written in the late 1800s. It focused on peasant life and received the Nobel Prize in 1924.
“Suzume” also reflects on life in a hometown, but the threat comes from the outside in the form of impending natural disasters symbolized by a giant worm. It might sound like the making of a sort of Kaiju monster film, but it’s really a filmmaker leaning into some symbolic storytelling. The central character in the film is an orphan who has been the victim of many disasters and is trying to find her way back to a more normal life. She wants to live in an ordinary world, but she’s blocked by magical, unusual creatures.
The helmer used the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan and how it impacted the film’s main character as the basis for his story. Now that Shinkai has a daughter himself, he felt it was natural to have a protagonist who is a teenager struggling with what it’s like to grow up in a broken world where things often don’t make sense.
Shinkai also felt there were things he could do in animation that would be much more difficult to do in live action. He believed creating the imaginary worm in an animated film makes the creature feel more real and also makes it possible to bring about the story as he truly imagined it. Whether it’s something as fantastic as a worm that assumes many different shapes or the use of doors and chairs as symbols, the helmer found it possible to tell a story he felt would capture adult audiences as well as younger viewers.
“While it’s called a worm, it does take many different forms in the story,” says Shinkai. “It looks like the worm is almost like water and at other times it looks like lava flowing. And it has something like a red steam coming out of it and at times it almost has this ice-like nature. The worm is threatening to cause destruction, and I was inspired by the events of 2011, when there was a terrible earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan. So, in many ways, the worm was a symbol or metaphor for the very force of nature and its many different forms. We wanted to make this film have some kind of dynamic cinematic action, so we knew we needed some kind of antagonist [that could] represent an earthquake. After I finished the film, I was invited to screen it in a place that was destroyed in 2011 by everything that happened. When the people who lived there liked the movie and appreciated my film, I felt honored by their response. You can heal through these stories.”