Le Storie Western

Just to begin, everyone should find and listen to the soundtrack to Sofia Coppola's newest film, Marie Antoinette. I have this really great affection for Sofia Coppola--The Virgin Suicides was one of my first favorite movies (the book, incidentally, is also really beautiful). When I heard a year ago that she was working on a new movie, I was ecstatic--but less enthused when I learned that not only was her movie going to be a historical film [ugh], but it would be based on Marie Antoinette [oh no], and set to an 80's soundtrack [dear Lord]. I thought I was about to witness the end of Sofia's young career.

I saw the movie this summer, some sketchy downloaded version that was basically just some guy recording on a camcorder during the French premiere but regardless, I mean, it was great. The songs are perfect, I think in some part meant to mirror the royal excess that helped bring on the French revolution...

At any rate, the album includes an Air song (as all Sofia Coppola movies do) called Il Secondo Giorno. it's really strange, very sparse, basically a man speaking Italian over some acoustic guitar... Which isn't very much like Air at all, so I looked it up, and apparently the song originally appeared on an album that was a project between Air and Italian author Alessandro Baricco. Air does do a lot of soundtrack work, so it makes sense that they might move on from movie work and create a soundtrack to work by a literary author. Somehow, I think this version of musical interpretation is better than Poe's at times hyper-sexual self-indulgent response to her brother's House of Leaves (is the fact that Poe is sliding in mud all over a car in her video with interspersed shots of her brother reading a sex scene from his book still giving anyone else nightmares?). As Professor McCulloh first put into words for me, I like artistic work that is guided by rules--that is, is created within a framework (besides personal, cultural) that informs production in a productive way. I especially like when this happens in fresh ways, and I think Air's work with Baricco is a perfect example of that.