Welcome to Controversy

Mattheus van Heijnsbergen, Filmanalyse 1

Screenshot #1 Paradise: Love (Ulrich Seidl, 2012)

Seidl,

Screenshot #2 Paradise: Love (Ulrich

2012)

Introduction
When you watch Paradise: Love (2012),
the
first film of the Paradise
Trilogy
by Austrian
cinematographer Ulrich Seidl, it
might come to your
attention that there arent quite the
many musical soundtracks
in the entire span of the film. There is the fiveman band that plays
traditional African music in the hotel for all guests
to enjoy, the several
brief moments that we see Teresa dance to the music
in the bar with her
Beach Boys (screenshot 2), and the last scene where
Teresas friends
surprise her with a stripper dancing to music played on a
portable CD
player.
At first the absence of music seemed regrettable, but Ulrich
Seidl made
a statement by not using music in a way most 21 st century box-office successes
do.
In this essay I will try to find out why the use and disuse of music fits the powerful
cinematographic style of Ulrich Seidl. Therefore it has to become clear what his
style is and what the usual integral role of music is in film.
The Seidl tableaux

Ulrich Seidl has developed an own style that one can recognize when watching
his complete Paradise trilogy. The trilogy was originally conceived as a single five
hour film, but instead he chose to keep the movies separately narrative. As Seidl
mentions in an interview, published by Ulrich Seidl Film Produktion released
during the 65th annual Cannes Film Festival where Paradise: Love competed, it all
becomes clear: On PARADISE my secret ambition was to film the stories in
such a way that, if necessary, they could exist on their own. I spent a year and a
half in the editing room on countless rough cuts, trying to interconnect the three
stories. And at some points that worked quite well. Still, none of the various
versions worked as a single film a 5 1/2-hour colossus.
Instead of being mutually enriching, they actually weakened each other. And
finally we came to the conclusion that the best solution artistically was not one,
but three separate films.
In order to see the correlation between the three films one must watch all three
films Paradise: Love, Paradise: Faith and Paradise: Hope. Having watched
Paradise: Hope, the concluding chapter of the trilogy that tells the story of
overweight 13-year-old Melanie and her first love, it became clear to me the
three films are artistically equivalent because of his style.
In the Cannes publication Seidls method is summarized in ten points of which
three are important regarding the use and disuse of music in this film. At first,
Seidls basic working method is to shoot fiction films in a documentary setting so
that unexpected moments of reality can meld with the fiction. This means that
there is no script in the traditional sense. The script consists of very precisely
described scenes but no dialogue. During shooting the script is continually
modified and rewritten. Seidl: I see the filmmaking as a process oriented by
what has preceded. In that way the material weve shot always determines the
further development of the story. Secondly, the film is shot in original locations.
And finally, music is present only when it is an integral component of a scene.
In addition to these methodical trademarks so-called Seidl tableaux are filmed
precisely composed shots of people looking into the camera. Most of his shots are
also mainly statically filmed creating a composition within a frame for the viewer
to behold. With these static shots Seidl is able to manipulate our view in such a
way that we create our own world. In other words, we make our own associations
with what happens within the frame. A good example is the scene where we see
the Western luxury of sunbathing white people on one side and on the other side
the Beach Boys staring at their foreign custom. A guard patrols in the middle of
the screen creating a physical border between these two worlds. This is not the
only time he creates this controversy. Screenshot #1 depicts the same image he
created as on the beach, but now in a different and more relevant setting to the
role of music in Paradise: Love. On the left side there is the formally dressed
music band playing their song and on the right side the hotel guests listening to
their African music. But the fact that theyre singing Hakuna Matata (Swahili for
No worries) isnt the only extreme controversy that is being shown here. What
strikes the eye the most is the enormous gap that lies in between the musicians
and the guests, and not to forget the soulless playing of the musicians like its
their weekly routine and the guests still being pleased by this fake faade. Here
music plays an integral part in the scene: one could state this was deliberately
staged, yet improvised, characterizing Seidls static shots even further as the
source of the sound is always present inside the frame.
The integral role of music
All the mentioned points of Seidls cinematographic style add up to an utter
contradiction to the use of a soundtrack music functioning as an emotional
bridge between narrative and context. Music typically plays an integral part in

film, but here music finds itself in a more aleatory world. The sound in the frame
becomes the music after which it becomes integrated in the film. Surely Seidl had
the ability to edit the sound, but there was no composing done 1. Kalinak, writer of
Settling the score (1992), confirms this integrality with the argument for the
importance of music to the emotional experience in classical narrative film.
Musics dual function of both articulator of screen expression and initiator of
spectator response binds the spectator to the screen by resonating affect
between them. Music is the most efficient code for emotional expression in
film. According to Kalinak (1992, p. 87): The lush, stringed passages
accompanying a love scene are representations not only of the emotions of the
diegetic characters but also of the spectators own response which music
prompts and reflects. The use of a soundtrack would contradict the non-fictional
world Seidl tries to create. Having music would force our sub consciousness to
associate with certain expressions, like Kalinak describes with the love scene,
meaning we would not find ourselves in the world that he wants us to be in.
Annabel J. Cohen contributed in Patrik N. Juslins Handbook of Music and Emotion:
Theory, Research, Applications (1993) with Music as a source of emotion in film
(chapter 11). She cites Mnsterberg (1970): the psychological processes
underlying film are more similar to those of music than to visual art or drama
which on the surface might seem more similar. And later: Music also contributes
to the aesthetic experience of the film. (p. 267) It might have been on purpose
that Seidl did not use a soundtrack. The aesthetics in this film is the beautiful
Kenyan environment it finds itself in. Seidl confirms this in the Cannes publication
interview: In my fiction films no less than in my documentaries, the original
location sound is an essential element contributing to their authenticity. And no
one masters location sound like Ekkehart Baumung. Ekkehart Baumung has
been Seidls soundman from the beginning; their collaboration dates back to
Seidls earliest film documentaries, including Good News (1990). With Ekkehart
Baumung Ulrich Seidl has changed the location sound into the soundtrack. His
method reflects in his music: the sound is a part of the improvised dialogue and
adds to the reality that is melding with the fiction. Therefore, the absence of
music is not an absence, but a choice the director has made to contribute to the
authenticity of his own fictive reality.
Still it could be debated whether the music in the bar scenes is deliberately
staged. In screenshot #2 we see Teresa dancing to the song Liz of local singer
Ben Mbatha. The fact that hes a local adds to the authenticity Seidl is
contributing to. Notable is the record label Ben Mbatha released his songs - Wyld
Pytch/51 Lex is a record label and music publishing company. They manage the
master rights, licensing and synchronization, distribution and promotion of
African music releases across the digital and physical landscape; helping their
clients reach a global audience. The fact that this was all non-credited might
show that Ben Mbatha was indeed a coincidental singer happening to be in the
frame that Seidl captured at that specific moment.
Conclusion
If one watches the entire Paradise Trilogy Seidls cinematographic method might
start to stand out. In each of these movies a world is created where controversy
is a topic that reflects our limits of norms and values and to get in this world Seidl
invites us to get close to the main person. Using environmental sound and music
from the local scene he authenticates this world we end up in. Therefore the word
1 The credits on IMDB.com clearly mention Martin Kreiner and Gerrit Wunder as
stock music composers. Yet, this is the only source that mentions those names.

disuse is misplaced and should be removed. Seidl has smartly manipulated the
absence of music and dealt with what he got at the end of each filming day.
Literatuur
Kalinak, K. (1992). Settling the score. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Mnsterberg, H. (1970). The photoplay: a psychological study. New York: Arno
(originally published 1916)
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/paradies_hoffnung/reviews/?type=top_critics
http://www.filmtotaal.nl/recensie.php?id=31034

http://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-cannes-2012-ulrich-seidls-paradise-love
http://variety.com/2012/film/reviews/paradise-love-1117947564/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuHpiDWYsqU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glPGOCUxkmg
http://www.ica.org.uk/blog/ulrich-seidl-paradise-trilogy
http://www.hatjecantz.de/ulrich-seidl-5630-1.html
https://portal.fontys.nl/instituten/FHK/MinorKunstCultuurEnOnderzoek/Documente
n%20Actuele%20Kunst/Seidl%20-%20Paradise%20Love%20Interview
%202012.pdf
http://www.upei.ca/%257emusicog/research/docs/musicsrcemotionfilm.pdf
http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199230143.001.
0001/acprof-9780199230143-chapter-31