One of the aspect of Welcome to the Dollhouse that gets overlooked, I think, is the importance of music to its story. Dawn plays the piano - "Wanna see my fingers?" - and is in her school choir. Her brother's in a band, The Quadratics (prev. post), and their need for a lead singer brings the sweet siren song of high-scool ne'er-do-well Steve Rodgers tumbling into Dawn's life. There are several musical numbers that dot the course of the film - Steve singing the title song, The Quadratics' performance at Harv and Marj's 20th...
... and then of course the bus-ride sing-a-log that ends the film, Dawn heading to a Disneyworld she doesn't want to go to, lost in her own world staring out the window, hummmmmmm.
.
Look in the sky At the tiny hummingbirds that fly
With wings that move faster
Than the eyes can see
Hummingbirds Hooray, Hurrah, Sis-boom-bah
Now put on a smile, kids
Wipe off that frown
We're hummable Hummingbirds
Happy and sunny birds
Humming all day long Come and join us in our song
Hum Hummable Hummingbirds
Humming along, we are Hum hummable Hummingbirds
We go up, up, up into the sky
We're the Hummingbirds of Benjamin Franklin Junior High
Hum
Todd Solondz uses music in Happiness as well, with poor Joy's pained attempts at being a musician only serving to underline her constant failure to arriving anywhere near anything transcendent. And so it goes for Dawn. Still, even though it's embarrassing and riddled with discordant mistakes, I find the moment where Dawn plays the piano for Steve Rodgers and the camera moves around her one of the film's most moving. She just wants to make something pretty so badly.
.
.
.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment