Tindersticks, Claire Denis Film Scores 1996 – 2009

By Michelle Patterson

How I judge whether or not a soundtrack feels organic to its cinematic equal is whether or not it can stand on its own. This does not determine whether or not it is good—the apparent strength of the music isn’t a question—but if it can genuinely remind me of the film when I am listening to it in the quiet of my own bedroom or on the chaotic bus to work.

The clearest role of the soundtracks as experienced in the Tindersticks‘ Claire Denis Film Scores box set is as passive listener. This music stands on its own, without its marriage to the visuals; better yet, it imports another sense of value when associated with an entirely new set of identifiers, all depending on the situation of the listener.

Thanks to the collaboration between the English band Tindersticks and the filmmaker, Claire Denis, when I smell freshly plucked basil or chop tomatoes I think of the soundtrack they created for White Material, the 2009 film starring Isabelle Adjani and Christopher Lambert.

Unfortunately, the clearest strength of this material then becomes its biggest weakness; you aren’t stopped in your tracks or focusing only on the albums. True, soundtrack music, by its very nature, cannot be used as something that drowns out the surroundings as it is meant to blend with everything else, not distract from it. A powerful soundtrack can enhance your experiences while the music plays, but your personal moments continue to exist as such while the music fades away just enough.

Despite the way Isabelle Huppert’s rust-red hair blows back, along with the bending trees and rust-red clay on her coffee plantation, skipping straight to the way the stringed-instruments on the soundtrack reflect the stressed lines within the frame of White Material, such images don’t overpower my preparation for dinner. They just allow me to be more present in that process because of the music. Then, the moment is gone.

This is not to say, however, that the music in this collaboration is without real depth. My role as listener of the box set led to the discovery that the cadence of conversations in the background were able to blend with the music much easier than most anything else I listened to on a regular basis. Because of the unpolluted nature of the subtext within the music’s relationship with Denis’ films, there is an effortless connection between listener and daily tasks and routines.

Claire Denis spends a long time focusing on certain moments in her films as if examining—and waiting—for deeper processes to reveal themselves or for the person to become part of the landscape. The lines of their bodies echo in the background as a melding of sorts between nature and man. According to various interviews with Denis and the Tindersticks, there was a joke among them that suggested the band develops what her film is really about before she does. They create the mood and true feeling for her, so when it is her turn, the film is “practically finished and she had very little left to do.”

The understatement of that is quite obvious, but it isn’t difficult to understand what she means by that. The music for these films exposes what trembles below the surface in deceptively simple ways.

Combining everyday, ordinary tempos—that can be found in repeated motions such as walking, washing one’s hands, the rotation of a car’s wheels, chopping vegetables—with surprising, interesting instruments not usually found in such “mundane” scenarios only amplifies cinematic and tension-riddled moments in Denis’ films. A solitary trembling flute and shuffling drumbeats become the flickering life during a search for dangerous militia on private property during a civil war.

The drones and creeping dread reveal an elegance of meaning in what appears to be the quiet context of one soundtrack while divulging the wonder and whimsical happiness of another; the music renders what may seem meaningless important. Mundane activity is captured as fragile. fraught with solemnity, and soon lost without a trace as soon as the music ends, yet there is relief that it was there at all.

The Tindersticks five disc box set includes the soundtracks to six of Claire Denis’ films: White Material, 35 Rhums, L’Intruis, Vendredi Soir, Trouble Every Day, and Nénette et Boni. It was released on April 26.

You can order the box set on the Constellation Records website, where you are encouraged to purchase from one of the nine independent regional suppliers linked to on the site because “over 50% of your purchase price will remain in your local economy and help support independent music retailers and distributors.”