Cinematic Dissonance
A Discourse on Box-Office-Blindness and the Necessity of Independent Enjoyment Outside of Narrative Constraints
“You know what the problem with Hollywood is? They make shit”…
…after all, for an artist, the only difference between insanity and genius is success. The emergence of trance music in the early 2000s, particularly having been championed by giants such as Paul Oakenfold, offers an intriguing case study of the value of a concept once removed from its cinematic origins.
This essay explores how “box-office blindness” – the tendency for a film’s commercial success to overshadow its artistic merit – threatens modern day appraisal of art. The Swordfish soundtrack illustrates how a film score can falter in fulfilling its intended narrative function, yet thrive as an aural experience out of the silver screen. In so doing, it resonates far beyond the critical reach of the film of which it is born.
The rise and fall of Paul
Voted No. 1 DJ in the world twice by DJ Magazine (a perplexingly unserious publication), Paul Oakenfold is renowned for his fastidious attention to sound design and pioneering the trance genre into the mainstream. He never fared particularly well with critics, assumedly explaining his transient interest in studio work. In 2001, though, he signed with Village Records and Warner Bros as music supervisor and not long later appeared prominently in the credits for Swordfish. It is a movie that centres around the infamous hacker, Stanley Jobson (Hugh Jackman), and his pursuit of government funds under the coercive thumb of counter-terrorist spy Gabriel Shear (John Travolta). The Swordfish soundtrack is the closest we’ve seen to an artist-album from Oakenfold, featuring only three tracks not produced by him. His notoriety in the trance scene seemed to lend itself to the film’s heavy focus on cyberspace, yet the album signals a questionable return to the studio for a dance superstar just off to the side of the mainstream.
Decoding the musical matrix
There are certain conditions you might consider necessary for a rousing needle drop in cinema. The song must anchor itself on the emotional stakes of the narrative arc. Its euphony must resonate through the tone of the scene, or, alternately, revel in dissonance. There are qualities of lesser importance to consider too; pacing, technical execution, and the consideration of how iconic you wish your moment to be (cue chicken-egg discussion re. “Born Slippy” in Trainspotting). Oakenfold’s insignia is an operative, coursing journey.
Admittedly, his Swordfish score does very little to enhance the film. The only kind of narrative integration it conveys is by way of vocals cutting through pulsing club beats – perhaps a musical metaphor for the separation between human and code. Human voices then become a signifier for humanity’s struggle, gesturing at tension through diatonic melodies set against chromatic harmony. Oakenfold’s compositions fulfil the minimum requirements of a soundtrack, fuelling the action sequences and cloyingly building suspense when needed, but fail to transcend due to a lack of a memorable, uniform thread. Stanley is torn between moral dilemma and the allure of danger, and “Swordfish Theme” deploys sweeping, cinematic melodies to capture the width of his internal conflict. Sure. But despite being the leading man, Oakenfold offers him no discernible musical theme. Where Oakenfold introduces the aforementioned sonic tension, it is laid down in broad strokes and doesn’t feel personal to the character. And Oakenfold’s embrace of increasingly commercial trance stylings feels disappointingly utilitarian. He leaves it to Jackman to fill in the character’s blank.
This complacency explains the soundtrack’s incoherence. Oakenfold’s anchoring pads and pirouetting synths are notionally complementary to the film; high stakes and high drama. But the Hollywood-level sound design is too polished, to the point where it doesn’t really feel like there’s a single person behind it all. It sacrifices emotional depth for a glossy finish, and the music feels disconnected from the intended cinematic experience. Perhaps the formulaic melodies of ‘Breach’ would fulfil their function at an Ibiza club, promoting base euphoria, but in the cinematic context it just feels like overkill, replicating an emotional arc you can already see playing out in front of you.
Oakenfold even manages to convince already esteemed musicians to let him hack their work, evident in his sludgey treatment of Afrika Bambaataa’s ‘Planet Rock’. His remix trudges on for far too long, and despite a varied procession of rhythms, his imprint questions the track’s necessity within the film. Even Muse’s seminal ‘New Born’ is not safe from such sabotage. Ultimately, Oakenfold’s soundtrack was doomed from the beginning; with no promotional singles released, the album was destined to mimic the movie’s own bleak box office performance.
Soundtrack liberation
But the very reason this album does not excel within the film is what makes it digestible outside of it. It's more rhythmic and atmospheric than harmonic. The lack of development and consistency lets individual tracks soar and develop a deep, independent connection to the dance floor.
“Kneel Before Your God” is an auditory pilgrimage, vividly felt through haunting, arpeggiated synths. A syncopated bassline plays off an impassioned kick drum and crisp hi-hats uncannily to whisks you into a hypnotic state. Its refreshingly organic swing and interplay of minor scales achieves cathartic dancefloor tension more naturally than most of its counterparts in the tracklist. It is sonic balm for the weary club traveller.
‘Planet Rock - Swordfish Remix’ employs pitch shifting and time stretching to metaphorically connect the past and present. The track’s confluence of frolicking melodies, bounding four-to-the-floor groove and modulating chords brings to mind one word: movement. It’s kinetic, almost pleading you to leave it all on the dancefloor. Whilst I maintain my criticism for the track’s incongruous placement inside the film, outside, it flourishes. I mean it’s no coincidence that City Girls’ “Twerkulator” samples the original source material.
“Unafraid” is a patchwork of sonic eccentricities that flirt with the boundaries of musical whimsy. It is an anthem of empowerment, marked by its musicality and lyrical content that give the soaring vocal samples emotional weight.
Oakenfold’s prowess seeps through his masterful EQ. His low-end is well-defined but functional, as rounded and crisp as it is pumping. It personifies a heartbeat, a kitschy but effective marker of good trance. Maybe it’s paradoxical that Oakenfold’s film-studio polish and finesse doesn’t translate on-screen, but resonates in short bursts away from it. But when you just listen, Oakenfold’s production culminates in a release that is both inevitable and thrilling. His Swordfish soundtrack is completely of its time, perhaps unambitious, and yet undeniably rousing. Dissected from their oeuvre, his songs shed all pretense and assume their rightful place in the culture – cued up on the left turntable of a club everyone’s too fucked-up and blissful to remember the name of.
Georgia Dedes
1 October 2024