For Wednesday  I set out to find a good match of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s music with visual images that moved me. I had plenty of choice: his scores have by now graced at least 20 or so major movie productions. In fact, some people argue that it is time to retire him for a bit from the cinematic scene – I totally disagree.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2008/may/29/timetogivepartarest

I found the visual beauty I was looking for in the desert. Filmed in 2003 by Portland’s own Gus van Sant, Gerry depicts 2 men (neither one of whom I care for, to tell the truth) getting lost in the desert of Death Valley. This review of the film says it all: Roger Ebert didn’t like it but admired it. https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/gerry-2003

The landscape shots are spectacular, though, and I have my own photographs from that ethereal landscape to match, which is why I picked it for today. (In fact I cannot begin to describe the beauty of that place, or any desert, for that matter. The colors you see in the photographs are true to reality.)

 

As we learned from the link above, Pärt’s music has been appropriated for The Good Shepherd and Candy, for Shane Meadows’ Dead Man’s Shoes and Cédric Kahn’s Red Lights, for Tom Twyker’s Heaven, Gus van Sant’s Gerry and Carlos Reygadas’ Japón. It’s there in Michael Mann’s The Insider, it’s there to furnish the terrible aftermath of the World Trade Center attack in Fahrenheit 9/11. The score most often used is his early Spiegel im Spiegel, which is brilliantly explained in the article attached below. The music is deceptively simple, but in its repetition becomes practically hypnotic.

 

Infinite reflections: Pärt’s ‘Spiegel im Spiegel’

Here is the full album. Repeat listening will mesmerize.