A daily chronicle of creativity in film, TV, music, arts, and entertainment, produced by Southern California Public Radio and broadcast from November 2014 – March 2020. Host John Horn leads the conversation, accompanied by the nation's most plugged-in cultural journalists.
“Youth” is a film about a retired composer and conductor, Fred Ballinger, played by Michael Caine. He’s vacationing at a Swiss spa when he receives an invitation from Queen Elizabeth to conduct a command performance of one of his best known pieces, “Simple Song #3.”
The film by Paolo Sorrentino uses music extensively to tell the story of a man dealing with aging and lost love. David Lang had the task of bringing these emotions out in his score for “Youth.” Lang is a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer who has worked in many different disciplines, but this is the first time he’s ever scored an entire film.
The Frame's John Horn talks with David Lang about his working relationship with director Sorrentino, and how the composer used his emotions to write the score for "Youth," including the piece at the heart of the movie.
How did "Simple Song #3" come together?
One of the interesting things about this movie, which is very different from the way that music works in movies normally, is that music plays such a role. I had to write the music before the script could be finished. So I had to have a lot of philosophical conversations with Paolo [Sorrentino]. I had to read the script drafts and figure out who the Michael Caine character was, and I just had this incredible emotional realization about it.
Where is the point of attack in an emotion in a piece? I think it should be something that has a long timeframe. But you can't actually have a movie and say, Two weeks later, you're really gonna get it. You need to have the emotional response immediately. And I have to say that was a big challenge for me because I'm not like that. So I kept sending demos to Paolo of the last song, which he loved, but then he would write me back and he would say, "I am crying a little, but I need to cry a lot."
When Paolo Sorrentino is sending you notes about "Simple Song #3" and saying that he's not crying enough, how do you answer that? How do you make a song that makes someone cry more?
That's a really great question and I only know how to answer those questions for myself. So I only know how to make myself cry more. So I had to just get incredibly dark about the film for myself, because the film really is about someone who is towards the end of his life looking back. The film is about someone who knows that his love has changed and will end.
So all I can think about was, you know, I love my wife. We've been married a long time. Eventually our love story will have a tragic end, God forbid, and what would it be like if my life were on screen? I'm sure there's a less psychically damaging way to figure out how to solve these problems, and maybe if I were a professional film composer I would know how to do that. But I only know how to do that by managing my own misery.
David Lang is nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Song for "Simple Song #3"