The tree. The crow. The hands that pull away. The tagged toe of the dead guy. The wheel of the gurney that does its quick jarring swivel. The flowers that slowly waste away.
The first time I watched 6FU I was living in a house with two roommates that we called The Spadina House for the obvious reason that it was on Spadina Cr. in Saskatoon (obviously, right?). It was an anomaly of a house on a block with fancy expensive mansiony type homes. Ours was all run down with yellow peeling paint (it has since been repainted blue and looks considerably nicer, though I still find it horrifying. It's the change that gets me) and a dingy unfinished basement. The kitchen was a 70s haven of wood and crappy linoleum tile. The upstairs was a sauna in the summer and an icebox in the winter (once, I took a hot water bottle with me to bed on one of those forty below nights in January and the next morning the water bottle had a block of ice in it the size of my fist). But it was ours. And it was CHEAP. Amazing for three undergrad students who lived off their wits and $520 worth of student loans each month.
So yeah, the opening credits are badass awesome. And yes, I've always been a fan of Alan Ball for his work on American Beauty. Therefore I've pretty much always loved the composer, Thomas Newman. He's quirky. He fills me to the brim with sadness, but in a good way. He (and Kevin Spacey's sultry hypnotic voice in the opening scene of American Beauty) makes me believe in possibility. And, like, the universe and shit. Listen to these:
So I watch the opening credits of 6FU and I get a little chill. I wonder why it is so easy to get pulled into a feeling of longing I can't explain. Truthfully, I have always been susceptible to this. These opening credits yank me down into a place where I'm allowed to be completely self-indulgent because all the characters on the show certainly are. I can think about death, examine and explore it, and it isn't cliche. It's dirty and raw and ugly and beautiful.
The plastic bag scene in American Beauty is probably considered overdone, in the sense that it was so profound and meaningful at the time the movie came out that most people are likely to roll their eyes at it now. Kind of like Titanic getting so much ridiculous publicity. Perhaps it was just too easy to manipulate the viewer in that scene, but honestly I still love it. The dialogue is simple and beautiful. Any time a scene is strikingly gut wrenching, no matter how overplayed in the future, I can't help but feel attached to it.
I get a little sick of trying to be cool and not affected by certain things. The funny thing is, once I get attached to something I can't ever let go. I'm not easily Buddhist. I have trouble with my attachments. Maybe that's why death is so fascinating to me. It's a loss of power and control, which is a bigger and much more impacting loss than losing people. Or maybe you just feel powerless whenever the threat of loss is obviously present.
Speaking of death and fantastic opening credit sequences, True Blood is another show I'm deeply invested in. I love the creepy fundamentalist theme here:
and (by suggestion from Ky from Open Fors) here's the opening sequence to Carnivale, which is also brilliant:
Thanks Ky. I love tarot cards.
On that note, I've got some read bad things to get done today (laundry), so I'll leave you with a wicked awesome remix of the title track for 6FU. Just to get you thinking about how lucky you are:
No comments:
Post a Comment