Audio to the Visual: Garden State's Music

          Films are known around the world and in definition as moving pictures, as imagery. Everything revolves around the scene, that thing you see as an audience. Equally important though, yet far more subtle than the images on the screen, are the use of song and music. Music is usually taken for granted. Most songs will not astound you in their ability to enhance the movie experience. More often than not a score while run alongside the moving pictures, subtly setting the tone like a deep, steady baseline. But when a song crawls out from under the skin of the movie and stands as a centerpiece, emotions and character developments can become that much more relevant and impactful. Songs are great at harnessing the abstraction of our undefined feelings and allow character's to silently express things that can't be conveyed through speech or conversation. Important events and themes of a movie stick with a viewer that much more when linked to a note or song.

          This may be common knowledge to most, that songs are moving. Yet 2004's Garden State expanded the boundaries of musical integration in films. Using songs released in the last decade, director Zach Braff is able to immerse scenes in a song, letting the music drive the story, letting images compliment the melodies, as opposed to their usual roles. In the final scene of the movie, Adam (Braff) leaves Sam (Portman) stranded in an airport, and prepares to leave behind her along with his recently united childhood friends and his father. In a sap-less montage, life continues as Adam prepares to embark. Commanded by the deep synth tones of Frou Frou's "Let Go" the scene epitomizes a message and a conflict that has been building the whole film.