Consumption: Ondine

Ondine (d. Neil Jordan)

Ondine is the story of an Irish fisherman named Syracuse (Colin Farrell) who catches a woman - literally - in his fishing net. After saving her from drowning, he finds that her presence on his boat has resulted in the catching of a shitload more fish. ("Shitload" is a fishing term, matey.)  Naturally, this begs the question: is she real, or a witch, or mermaid-like creature? And why is it that she's always singing a song when the fish are being caught? This well-told fairy tale gets weird toward the end, with the following overly meta scene in which the fisherman hears the familiar mermaid's song from an unlikely source:



Keep in mind that his daughter eight years old.  How many 8-year-olds know Sigur Rós?  Perhaps even a more appropriate question is this:  Have we reached the saturation point on using Sigur Rós in the climax of films yet?  Understand that they're one of my favorite bands ever so I understand the urge to go to the well repeatedly.  The music is ethereal and cinematic in scope, but just from films I remember off the top of my head, it's become an issue.

Cameron Crowe got in on the action early in 2001.



Then a couple years later, Wes Anderson broadened his Brit-pop horizons to score Steve Zissou's jaguar shark encounter.



That same year, Gregg Araki's excellent Mysterious Skin had a familiar climactic soundtrack.



Notice that these are all happening at the climax of each film? Such was the case in 2006's Penelope, a film I never actually saw, but apparently they branched out and chose Peter Dinklage to play the role of the film's little person.



Even 2010 Best Picture nominee 127 Hours makes use of Sigur Rós's "Festival" as a one-armed Aron Ralston struggles to survive the film's final moments. It's time to say ENOUGH to the filmmaking community. Ease off the Sigur Rós. If you can't find the emotional power to end your film without cheating by using the soaring falsetto of the finest post-rock to ever come out of Iceland, then perhaps it's time someone takes your music budget away. It will be returned when you've shown your responsible enough to handle it like a grown up.

BIBJ Playlist of the 2000s entry #82: Untitled #4 (Njósnavélin) by Sigur Ros

In my younger days, I was always curious about the audiences for bands on world tours. Specifically, I remember wondering why people in other countries would want to go see a band who sang songs in English, and how those bands got famous worldwide to begin with. As I grew up and realized that most of the rest of the world speaks English as well, this puzzled me less, but it’s still an interesting situation. If R.E.M. is touring Japan or Springsteen is making a trek across Europe, there have to be at least some natives attending these shows who don’t speak English. Consider the opposite scenario. I’m sure there are Japanese pop stars who are HUGE in their native country, but obviously would never attempt to cross over to an American audience.

But once in a while you realize that language is pretty small barrier for the right band. In 2001, I saw Radiohead in Boston, with a particularly compelling opening band I had never heard before. Were one to make a list of “things I don’t expect to witness when seeing a new band,” the following three components would likely appear on the list in question:

• A guitar being strummed violently with a bow
• Lyrics being sung in either Icelandic, or an invented variation of Icelandic
• Those same unintelligible lyrics being sung in a stunningly high falsetto. (Were it not for visual confirmation, you’d have a tough time determining the sex of the vocals.)

It’s not exactly conventional to say the least. More than maybe any other band, I find myself wondering how the process even works when it comes to Sigur Rós writing a song. The compositions are closer to ethereal symphonic compositions than to actual songs. The stunningly hypnotic nature of their output has made them a  soundtrack favorite of filmmakers the last several years. Tom Cruise ended Vanilla Sky with them blasting in the background. They hovered below the sea when Steve Zissou confronted the jaguar shark. And their presence in movie trailers borders on overkill at this point.  Good Lord.  If Iceland could score any cash from Sigur Rós licensing, maybe they wouldn't be bankrupt.

In 2002, they released an album called ( ). None of the tracks on the album had titles. Again not exactly accessible. I’m not sure how you would ask for the album in a store; would you just call it “parentheses?” (Then again, I suppose asking for one of their albums with an actual title wouldn't be much easier.) They also made their US television debut around that time, a pretty impressive booking for a band you wouldn’t expect getting 5 minutes on late night American television.

There will be another Sigur Rós post down the line where I'll expand on this point, but their documentary Heima, shot in Iceland, is one of the greatest looking films you'll ever see.  Do some YouTube viewings and you'll want to book a trip.

P.S. Where the hell is Craig Kilborn these days? Drop a line and let us know you’re OK, Craiggers!