Obviously, doctor, you’ve never been a thirteen-year-old girl

Air: The Virgin Suicides

In The Virgin Suicides, when all traditional modes of communication between people have been severed, they communicate through banal, middle of the road seventies pop records. The studio-heavy, manufactured malaise of the seventies hangs heavy in the story, and this puts Air in a somewhat awkward position. They are seventies analog fetishists to a degree, but here they must both evoke the glossy overproduction of the era while still selling the extremely dark emotions the film grapples with.

The soundtrack is very cold but not impersonal. Unlike the impermanence that Air’s prior work suggested, this is music heavy with the weight of tragedy. “Playground Love” is beautiful, dejected romance, and their finest song to date. “Dead Bodies” takes all the energy saved up throughout for one mad dash to the end. The score does a fine job of skating the edge between the wrought emotions of the entire affair and the detached, slow-release affect it is treated with. Separate from the movie, it still achieves a spooky resonance, with suggestions of adolescence, loneliness, innocence, sexuality, and loss. Their most fulfilling work.

****

~ by jshopa on August 8, 2008.