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New Indian Express
12-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New Indian Express
On Francis Ford Coppola's operas, chamber pieces and Trump's Godfather resemblances
Francis Ford Coppola. Music is integral to the Godfather director's films. Rarely ornamental, it sets the scene, drives and influences the narrative. The iconic use of music in the flawed and ultimately unsatisfying Apocalypse Now, especially The Door's The End synchronised to the sound of helicopter rotor blades and Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries during the helicopter assault scene, shapes the visual spectacle. But it goes deeper. Just like composers often work in different formats, Coppola created introspective chamber music pieces (The Conversation) or extroverted grand operas (The Godfather and Godfather Part II ). The Conversation, made in 1974, is ostensibly a thriller. Set almost entirely indoors in claustrophobic shots, the film has an oppressive atmosphere and relentless tension. The central character Harry Caul (played by the late Gene Hackman in one of his finest performances) is a surveillance expert for hire. It opens at San Francisco's Union Square when we follow a man (Frederick Forrest) and woman (Cindy Williams). We make out snippets of conversation, jazz and singing. What we are hearing is Caul and his associates' remote recording of a private conversation. The plot revolves around the tape which was commissioned by the Director (Robert Duvall) as evidence of what may be an incriminating liaison between the man and the woman who could possibly be his wife. The recording turns out to be a trap designed by someone, we are never clear whom, to lure the Director to a hotel room where he is to be assassinated. The Conversation revels in ambiguities. Caul, the consummate professional, finds himself tricked into revealing confidences by a competitor planting a cheap pen with a built-in listening device on him. He is successful but is a failure in his personal relationships and his employee (John Cazale). Intruding into other private lives, he has none of his own. It culminates in a memorable final scene. Caul suspects that he is now under surveillance, the person who bugged other people is now being listened to. He dismantles his entire apartment, including breaking apart a figurine of the Virgin Mary, to locate any concealed listening devices. The closing has Caul sitting in the wrecked premises playing his saxophone as the camera pans back and forth furtively The film was intended by Coppola as a showcase for the talents of Walter Murch, his brilliant long time sound and film editor. Fittingly, the audio elements, sometimes simple but at others multi layered, are central throughout. When Caul goes to see the Director who hired him and is met by the man's assistant (Harrison Ford), he refuses to hand the tapes over. Hurrying out of the office building, he notices that the man and woman he recorded work for the same company. At this point, the soundtrack becomes a melange of noises which is suddenly drowned out by the sounds of a tape recorder running dramatically transitioning to Caul listening to the recordings in an effort to establish its content. The Godfather and Godfather Part II, released in 1972 and 1974 but best thought of as one continuous film, operate on a grander scale. They are operatic melodramas carried by superb performances (Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Robert de Niro, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, Talia Shire, John Cazale and others) and the cinematography. As to the later, Gordon Willis crafted the first film in stately browns and church-like solemnity but in Part II alternated interior darkness with light filled outdoor scenes recreating Lake Tahoe, Havana and Sicily. Like all opera, the plot is trite although individual set pieces are often dazzling. There are unforgettable scenes in The Godfather – the opening at Sonny's wedding, the making of "an offer that you can't refuse" to a Hollywood producer, the various meetings of Mafia bosses, the shooting of Don Corleone, the revenge killing of the Mafioso and policeman protecting them and, of course, the climactic murders of other family bosses against the background of a church baptism. It ends with a long shot of Michael Corleone effortlessly taking over from his father. Godfather Part II is illuminated by the sequences of the young Don Corleone in New York, the Senate Investigation sequence, the attempted assassination of Michael Corleone and the prolonged shots of him alone in crushing solitude. Befitting its operatic framing, the films are ultimately tragedies concerned about human fallibility. It explores the characters' embrace of a pervasive evil, which is frequently justified as necessity. Michael Corleone is meant to be separate from the family's nefarious business but finds himself unable to escape it. There is the absence of opportunities for immigrants which encourages a life of crime. Both films are haunted by weakness, portrayed by Fredo's failures, and the long-suffering women excluded from the predominately male world. Nino Rota's music scores are powerful and nostalgic. Their repetitive themes, like the Godfather Waltz, accentuate the visuals beautifully. Ultimately, great films are universal. They resonate and inform different epochs. The Conversation and The Godfather films are especially relevant to our times. In The Conversation, Coppola shows a fascination with security technology and its use in the same way that Michelangelo Antonioni did in his 1966 film Blow Up. Today, far more pernicious camera and audio surveillance is found across many countries not just authoritarian states, as Edward Snowden's disclosures revealed. In the film, Coppola shies away from the obvious issues around spying on people, focusing on the ambiguity of the information and how we understand its relevance. The recording from the surveillance is never quite what it seems. It appears for much of the film to be sought for one purpose but plot twists undermine this rationale replacing it with a more complex and sinister reason. The emphasis, consistent with the work's intimate chamber piece quality, is on individual moral and ethical responsibilities. Caul's absorption with the technology is evident at the start of the film: "I don't care what they're talking about, all I want is a nice flat recording." This quest for technical excellence avoids confronting the real purpose of spying. His assistant dismisses the content as "what a stupid conversation!" When Caul finally deciphers the words, playing the recording over and over, a chilling phrase emerges: "He'd kill us if he got the chance." Caul's concern comes from Catholic guilt about an earlier job he carried out where the three subjects were later murdered. When the recording's import become clearer, he is too late to prevent events from taking their course. The Godfather films serve as an allegory for American capitalism providing an interesting metaphor for the current US President and his administration. The Corleone family believes in the Darwinian survival of the strongest and most adaptable to circumstances. There is an equation of crime and business. In The Godfather, the meeting between Don Corleone, his son and consigliori with Sollozo to discuss entering into drug trafficking resembles a corporate board meeting considering a new investment. There is a moment in The Godfather Part II, when Hyman Roth tells Michael Corleone that they are "bigger than US Steel". The corrupting effect of absolute power underscores the Godfather films. The Corleone and other families ruthlessly pursue and eliminate enemies, real and perceived. They dominate by violence and fear. They equate money and authority. Family values cover the brutal nihilism that lies at its core. Its principles, such as Omerta so central to the second film, are hollow. Given that there isn't much to redeem any character, the films are morally ambiguous in the same way as Bernardo Bertolucci's 1970 The Conformist. Director Nicholas Roeg complained that he found the Godfather films a "doom-laden, black nasty thing". Writing in the Financial Times, columnist Gideon Rachman openly compared President Trump's approach to politics and diplomacy to that of Don Corleone. Like a movie mob boss, President Trump alternates between menace and magnanimity. He employs fear and threats as a tactic for shaking down nations, businesses, educational institutions and legal firms. The language is telling. The President and Vice President have repeatedly stated that other nations, seen as competing crime families, have to show "respect". During the 2024 election campaign in remarks made at his golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey, President Trump specifically referred to the "Biden crime family". The relentless pursuit of opponents and the disregard for the rule of law parallel that of the Corleones. Erratic and escalating demand for payment in return for "protection", such as the mineral deal with Ukraine, is difficult to differentiate from blackmail. The President's son urged countries targeted with tariffs to quickly buy off his father, writing at @realDonaldTrump : "I wouldn't want to be the last country that tries to negotiate a trade deal … The first to negotiate will win — the last will absolutely lose." He added: "I have seen this movie my entire life." The similarity of President Trump and his entourage's approach to The Godfather is striking. The Conversation, the chamber music offering, and The Godfather and Godfather Part II, the operas, represent the highpoint of Francis Ford Coppola's films. As with any significant and enduring work, the line between life and art is never clear. Jointly published with Feuilleton is historically a part of an European newspaper or magazine devoted to material designed to entertain the general reader. Extraneus, in Latin 'an outsider', is a former financier and author. A reasonable club cricketer, he took up a career in money markets because he wasn't good enough to be a professional cricketer, needed to make a living and no one offered him a job as a cricket commentator or allowed him to pursue his other passions.
Telegraph
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Die Walküre: A bleak but brilliant vision of damaged nature and toxic relationships
One major advantage of unveiling a production of Wagner's Ring cycle year by year over four years is that you don't need to decide at the beginning how it will end. The director of the Royal Opera's new year-by-year staging, Barrie Kosky, has said that he does not know how this story will turn out by 2027: in this second instalment, his vision is an unvaryingly bleak and tortured picture of damaged nature and toxic relationships. As in the opening Das Rheingold, the scorched trees and gloomy landscapes of Rufus Didwiszus's sets create a compellingly bare, stripped-back scene of an earth destroyed. The wizened, aged, naked figure of Erda (Illona Linthwaite) observes continually: you feel she has seen it all before, covering her eyes in horror. She oversees interactions for both humans and gods in which we can believe: the awakening, forbidden love of Sieglinde and Siegmund; the fraught relationship between Wotan and his daughter Brünnhilde. There is not much to be gleaned from the first act's dreary blank wall of Sieglinde and Hunding's house, until the moment when the buried sword that Siegmund extracts reveals one of the production's ingenious twists. Solomon Howard's Hunding is a commanding figure (until Wotan dismisses him later with a Tosca-like backward flip), Natalya Romaniw's brightly sung Sieglinde a wife who screams in fear until she realises that Stanislas De Barbeyrac's ardent, lyrical Siegmund is her twin and her love. If this first act is slow to ignite, the second is totally compelling, starting from the crisp, strongly articulated Wotan of Christopher Maltman, whose argument with Marina Prudenskaya's imposing Fricka in purple, arriving in period limousine, is a power marriage all gone wrong. Elisabet Strid's youthful, tomboyish Brünnhilde starts as a rebellious child but quickly matures into an achingly independent adult in her heart-rending scene with her father in which their every fleeting emotion is captured in Kosky's direction. It was always to be expected that Kosky would want to delve into the constant problem of Wagner's anti-Semitism, and here the appearance in Act II of a charred body that is then viciously destroyed prepares the way for a shocking rethinking of the Ride of the Valkyries at the start of Act III, as they collect incinerated bodies, a sensation rescued theatrically only by the individual characterisations of the coven-like Valkyries. Vocally, this is a fascinating Walküre: all the singers, Maltman and Strid especially, but also Romaniw (who came in late to replace the more heavyweight talent Lise Davidsen), are comparatively youthful, fresh voices without a heavy inheritance of years of Wagner singing. The words are paramount, and their impulsiveness is matched by Antonio Pappano's conducting, which drives the music forward, sometimes feeling a little loose, but always effective in pushing the story forwards. Pappano is now Conductor Laureate at the house whose music he directed so effectively for 22 years. Who knows, perhaps a more optimistic vision of the future of humanity may emerge in the remaining instalments of this impressive, stimulating Ring cycle.
Yahoo
18-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘9-1-1' Showrunner On That Helicopter Chase & ‘Apocalypse Now' Connection That Wasn't To Be
SPOILER ALERT: ABC's '' On a typical 9-1-1 episode, this would've been a centerpiece — a chase involving three helicopters around Downtown Los Angeles skyscrapers that ends with a landing on the field of the L.A. Coliseum. More from Deadline Angela Bassett & Tim Minear Dissect '9-1-1' Shocker & Its Fallout And Explain Why [Spoiler] Had To Die '9-1-1' Shocker: Original Cast Member Leaving After 8 Seasons, Admits "It's A Tough Goodbye" '9-1-1' Renewed For Season 9 At ABC But the April 17 episode of ABC's firefighter drama, 'Lab Rats,' was far from typical, marking the exit of star and executive producer Peter Krause. So the impressive stunt was overshadowed by Station 118 Captain Bobby Nash (Krause) dying just minutes later at an underground lab where a fire had triggered the release of a deadly virus. The aerial pursuit involved 118's Buck (Oliver Stark) and his ex Tommy (Lou Ferrigno Jr.) leading two military choppers on a decoy mission while Athena (Angela Bassett) rushed to deliver a vial of anti-viral to Bobby's team, one of whom, Chimney (Kenneth Choi), had gotten infected. The plan worked and Chimney lived; it was ultimately Bobby who sacrificed his life for his team. (For Deadline's coverage of Krause's exit, read our story with Krause's comments as well as a Q&A with star/executive producer Bassett and executive producer/showrunner Tim Minear.) Here, Minear discusses the helicopter chase, which was not a CGI trick. 'It was all real,' he said. How did they pulled it off? 'We got helicopters and we got an aerial unit,' he said. 'Basically, I knew that I wanted the LAFD chopper to land on the roof of the building, and for our people to escape that way.' That is a reference of Tommy coming to Buck and Athena's rescue as they were running away from the FBI with the antidote. 'And then Bob Williams, our line producer, who's always giving me more than I asked for — when we did the tsunami, he called me from Mexico and said, 'Would you like to see this ferris wheel collapse into the Pacific as they're racing away on their Zodiacs?', and I'm, like, 'Knock it over', because that wasn't in the script,' Minear recalled. 'So Bob said, 'Anyone can have a helicopter take off from a building. How about if we get two military choppers and have a chase through downtown LA that ends up in the Coliseum?', and I'm like, 'Let's do it'.' He then revealed what the sequence initially looked like. 'Originally, there was a four-minute version of that, which I just loved. And I slapped Wagner over it, it was Ride of the Valkyries, and it was my favorite thing, I watched it a million times,' Minear said. 'It's four-minutes long, I'm like, I'm going to have to probably cut your desk scene short, because I'm so in love with this.' In its original form, the sequence was clearly an homage to what likely is the most famous helicopter scene ever in Apocalypse Now, which also is four-minute-long and was set to Wagner's music. But it didn't make it to air. 'Eventually the network in the studio talked sense to me, and they're like, it really can't be Ride of the Valkyries, and it can't be four minutes,' Minear said. Best of Deadline 'Ransom Canyon' Soundtrack: All The Songs You'll Hear In The New Netflix Western Romance Series Everything We Know About 'Emily In Paris' Season 5 So Far Everything We Know About Ryan Coogler's 'Sinners': From The Themes To How It Was Shot
Observer
15-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Observer
Classical music at Coachella? LA Philharmonic makes desert debut
The Los Angeles Philharmonic led the charge into their first Coachella performance on Saturday with the "Ride of the Valkyries," helmed by Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel, in his latest move to reach out to new audiences. The first major orchestra to grace the annual music and arts festival in the Southern California desert was joined by several vocalists, including jazz pop singer Laufey, who debuted her new song "Silver Lining", and Becky G with her pop song "Shower." Country singer Maren Morris arrived on the stage in a shimmering gold dress, delivering her gospel number "My Church" alongside a majority Black choir. FILE PHOTO: People attend the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California, U.S., April 12, 2025. REUTERS/Daniel Cole/File Photo Perhaps the most anticipated guest, German record producer and DJ Zedd, hopped on the piano and the choir, in yellow gowns, joined him for his popular 2012 song "Clarity." LL Cool J arrived in a yellow hoodie and took audiences far from the classical ambiance into his popular rap song "Mama Said Knock You Out." In a special moment on stage, LL Cool J presented Dudamel with a yellow hat that matched both the rapper and the choir. Classical music at Coachella? LA Philharmonic makes desert debut The musical set included a host of classical pieces, including Johann Sebastian Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor". The LA Philharmonic, considered one of the world's top orchestras, has been long admired for snaring Venezuelan sensation Dudamel more than 15 years ago. The maestro, 44, is set to take over as music and artistic director of the New York Philharmonic in 2026. —Reuters
Yahoo
13-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Classical music at Coachella? LA Philharmonic makes desert debut
By Danielle Broadway INDIO, California (Reuters) -The Los Angeles Philharmonic led the charge into their first Coachella performance on Saturday with the "Ride of the Valkyries," helmed by Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel, in his latest move to reach out to new audiences. The first major orchestra to grace the annual music and arts festival in the Southern California desert was joined by several vocalists, including jazz pop singer Laufey, who debuted her new song "Silver Lining", and Becky G with her pop song "Shower." Country singer Maren Morris arrived on the stage in a shimmering gold dress, delivering her gospel number "My Church" alongside a majority Black choir. Perhaps the most anticipated guest, German record producer and DJ Zedd, hopped on the piano and the choir, in yellow gowns, joined him for his popular 2012 song "Clarity." LL Cool J arrived in a yellow hoodie and took audiences far from the classical ambiance into his popular rap song "Mama Said Knock You Out." In a special moment on stage, LL Cool J presented Dudamel with a yellow hat that matched both the rapper and the choir. The musical set included a host of classical pieces, including Johann Sebastian Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor". The LA Philharmonic, considered one of the world's top orchestras, has been long admired for snaring Venezuelan sensation Dudamel more than 15 years ago. The maestro, 44, is set to take over as music and artistic director of the New York Philharmonic in 2026.
