Nothing is more complicated and intriguing than an artist’s relationship with their work. The type of art makes no difference—music, films, novels, paintings—all artists will always be passionately connected to their creative output. This emotional bond will continue to grow and evolve with the artist throughout their life, with the potential to bring out feelings of pride, love, fear, and joy in equal and unexpected measures. Is an artist defined by their work, or is the work defined by the artist? Youth, a film written and directed by Paolo Sorrentino, is a profoundly intimate exploration of this relationship. The film stars Michael Caine as Fred Ballinger, an acclaimed classical music composer on the verge of retirement. He is spending a quiet, contemplative vacation at a luxury Swiss Alps resort with his devoted daughter Lena (Rachel Weisz) and his lifelong friend Mick (Harvey Keitel), a filmmaker also pondering retirement. They are joined by a young actor, Jimmy (Paul Dano), who is preparing for a challenging new role, and Mick’s cinematic muse Brenda (Jane Fonda).
Youth’s emotional backbone is “Simple Song #3”, an original song by composer David Lang. In the film, the song is part of Fred’s masterpiece, his “Simple Songs”. Though these are his most celebrated work, he refuses to perform them for personal reasons. Refrains of the melody are heard throughout the film, and the song is performed in its entirety at the film’s conclusion by award-winning soprano Sumi Jo. The song represents Fred’s emotional journey as an artist as he approaches the end of his life, and it defines his relationship with his work. Sorrentino asked Lang to write the film’s signature song before he had even completed the script. He provided specific story notes but gave Lang full creative freedom to craft a song that drives the entire film.
Lang is one of America’s most performed composers and is the composer in residence at Carnegie Hall. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 2008 and a Grammy for Best Small Ensemble Performance in 2010 for The Little Match Girl Passion, which sets Hans Christian Andersen’s fable in the format of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. Lang’s work on Youth was the first time he had composed music specifically for a movie, and it earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song. He took the time to chat with us about his creative approach to composing “Simple Song #3”.
How did you become involved with the project?
Paolo had used my music in The Great Beauty [2013], but I didn’t know him yet. You can just go to a composer’s publisher and license their music, and they never need to be contacted or asked. When the film came to the Toronto Film Festival, Paolo invited me to attend the premiere. He told me, ‘By the way, I’m thinking that my next film is going to be about a composer, and I want to ask you some questions about how a composer thinks and how composers live. I also wonder if you might want to write the music for the composer.’ I’m sure I screamed very loudly that I would like to, and that’s it. So I met him because he had already used my music and he wanted me to be on this new project, which is fantastic.
What did Paolo tell you about the film?
The script didn’t really exist yet. It was in a very early draft which had many other things happening in it. It had different characters and a different title. But the one thing that was the same, which I really loved, was the idea that at the beginning of the film you would learn about a piece of music that a composer had written when he was a young man. We’d talk about it, we’d hear little bits of it, we would learn more about the character, and at the end of the film, we would finally hear the piece. I loved the idea that the film was about a composer, as I love composers—I’m a composer groupie. I think we are very interesting people and I was happy that somebody would finally make a major motion picture about us. I loved the idea that somebody would think that a song would be capable of revealing this much narrative information. And that’s really where he began. A lot of the characters weren’t even written yet and the script was in a very draft form, so the idea of using a song to tell a story was really kind of revolutionary in Paolo’s thinking. It was an incredible gift to me that he would give me the chance to be the person to write that song.
What was it like to see the final version of the film?
It was such a shock. Normally, the film is finished first. The script is done, the acting is done, and the shooting and the editing is done, and then the composer receives it at the very last moment. Everyone is really mad at the composer already because they’re not done yet and they have to do very specific things, but none of that happened with this project. I had to be the first one done because so much of the music was seen onscreen and so much of the character came out of where the music was. So I was done a year before I saw the movie, which is amazing. We went to Abbey Road Studios with all of these great musicians and recorded everything. We finished completely and then I sort of forgot about it.
After Paolo finished the film, it was screened at the Cannes Film Festival. I saw it at Cannes on the screen, which is a thousand feet high, with all of these people in the audience. It was very emotional for me because I knew what the music was and I knew what it meant to me, but until that moment, I didn’t realize how important it was in the story. I knew it intellectually, but when you see the movie, you feel it, and it really feels like a payoff. I just wasn’t prepared for how powerful it would be. I thought I knew it already, but seeing characters do things is very different than me singing it to myself in my own studio. It was very, very different.
Can you tell us about your inspiration for “Simple Song #3”?
This is very interesting because usually your inspiration is that you don’t want to get fired from one of these projects. So there’s this huge amount of pressure because the director always has to be satisfied is looking for something specific that solves a problem. Because this began in such an unformed state, Paolo didn’t have anything specific, but I still had to make him happy. I would ask him at the beginning, ‘How is this character supposed to feel at the end? Is he supposed to feel happy or triumphant or depressed or regretful or bittersweet or in love or out of love? Is he thinking about his wife? Is he thinking about the Harvey Keitel character? Who is he? What’s going on here?’ And he would say, ‘Oh, I don’t care. You will figure it out.’ So it was a very weird pressure because I had to figure out what this emotional moment meant. I had to please this director completely with very little information about what would please him. All he had told me was that it needed to be emotional, and so I ended up having to do for this what I would have done in an opera, which is what I do in my normal work. I project myself into the character. I can read in the script that this is what the character is going through, and how would I be feeling in that situation. How would I be if I were at the end of my life looking back on all the things that I’d hoped to accomplish, and looking back on something that I did accomplish that was beautiful and was representative of who I was sixty years earlier when I was young and optimistic and in love. How would I feel? So basically I had to make myself feel miserable and I had to this incredible psychic damage to myself trying to imagine how I would be if, God willing, I get into my eighties and can look back on how I feel.
Youth Music & Sound Featurette:
“Simple Song #3”:
Youth Trailer:
Photos courtesy of Fox Searchlight