Dario Marianelli - V for Vendetta: Evey Reborn

I remember as a child my mom after dinner. 

"Look at the pretty trees," she said, washing a dish. She looked out the window over the sink. 

***

Breathing, scattered gravel and lactic acid legs running constantly uphill. Heat, roadkill, swamp, relentless elevation, a drainage ditch, a decaying willow, heavy legs.  

Mile five apexed. The last two miles were downhill. That didn't matter. Downhill on foot you still have to put one foot in front of the other. 

Then my mom's voice rose from the back of my head: "Look at the pretty trees".

I looked out at the top of the fifth mile and saw rolling hills, waving grass, cows, a hand-built fence, and further in the distance, a long ridge that lifted from the plain to make the horizon. The wind wound through and moved it all. The clouds shifted shadow and light. 

***

I came home after a bad day, made myself dinner and turned on TV. V for Vendetta. They throw Evey in prison and take away her hope. They put her in a smock, shave her hair, feed her slop she rushes to eat before the mouse. They want her to give up V. In a crack in the wall she find toilet paper. On it is the story of the cell's past inmate, Valerie, imprisoned for lesbianism. 

Valerie wrote her life story on the piece of toilet paper. From her first love, to her parents disowning her, to finally meeting her partner, to a few years of bliss, to persecution and then imprisonment. The note ends with Valerie saying no one can take away those years of freedom she had with her love. 

The music during the montage of Valerie's story is a gentle, pattering piano (4:10 in "Valerie"). Its rhythm suggests soft rain. Valerie says she found comfort in the rain, that her grandmother told her "God is in the rain". 

Evey reads pieces of Valerie's story between torture. Finally, her captors bring an ultimatum: give up V or die. She chooses to die. 

She's let out of the cell and finds it's a fake. V set the prison up, shaved her head and tortured her to teach a lesson: that she valued freedom over life. It all hits and Evey hyperventilates. V tells her that just because it wasn't real doesn't mean that what she learned about herself wasn't real. She says she needs air and he takes her to the roof.  

"Every Reborn" starts with buddhist instruments: a singing bowl, bells, wind chimes, pebbles. These instruments' limited pitch ranges and interfaces do not produce melodies, and therefore, cannot stir the emotions as instruments capable of melodies do. Still, their sonic variations challenge the attention. This combination makes these instruments ideal tools for meditation. These buddhist instruments presage Evey's enlightenment, the most important buddhist enlightenment, detachment from fear of death. (The movie visually emphasizes Evey's buddhist character by dressing her as a monk: her prison garb is a simple orange smock, like traditional buddhist robes; her head is shaved like a buddhist monk's). 

At :25 are foreboding, dissonant strings. They are dread. They occur exactly when Evey realizes her prison experience may be inauthentic. At :35 the dread manifests as a physical sensation - it's a more visceral, anxious feeling. This feeling is accomplished through a synth guitar moving left to right and back and forth, like an angry bee in the brain. The key and timbre feel Middle Eastern - evoking heat, and for Westerners, the unknown and inhospitable. At :58 the buddhist mindfulness bells return, suggesting vacillation between anxiety and enlightenment - the jagged, disordered state when the mind is on the brink of something. 

At 1:05 is a wheezing synth rhythm that matches the rhythm of hyperventilation. At 1:12 returns the Middle Eastern guitar, stronger and more prolonged, pouring on anxiety, even, at 1:34, modulating up an octave, becoming more anxious. The hyperventilation rhythms continue, just as Evey hyperventilates from the shock of the reveal. 

But in the mess of all this anxiety and dissonance, something different rises at 1:28. Strings that are more consonant. These strings are an embryonic version of the "Freedom Chords". Some enlightenment is emerging from the anxiety. 

You can hear the Freedom Chords clearly from 2:30 to 2:39. They're a simple, driving 4 sustained chord progression. They seem to be ABCD (they might be shifted up or down, but the proportions are correct). ABCD looks like a simple progression, going up one note each time, but because of how musical notation was set, there is a big step between A and B, a smaller one between B and C, and another big one between C and D. 

These intervals give the rising pitch a persevering quality. It takes a big step from A to B, a small step from B to C (as if it ran into some resistance or tired), and then gathers its strength for another big step from C to D. It reminds me of the Animatrix short "World Record", where an athlete limited by the Matrix to a wheelchair, frees his mind, lifts himself from the wheelchair, and takes some steps. 

At the same time, it feels incomplete. If something is moving up from A, it should find its dominant fifth, which is an E. The Freedom Chords go from A to D, so while they feel positive, there is still a sense they are unresolved since they haven't reached E. This lack of fulfillment is used to great effect. It allows the Freedom Chords to repeat and modulate up repeatedly. That lack of fulfillment also suggests there is more work to do; that the enlightenment isn't an end to itself, but will lead to something else. 

At 1:55, the anxious dissonance begins to clear for a tentative statement of the Freedom Chords. The veil has been lifted and something good is about to happen. At 2:12, the buddhist bells ring once more, signaling the enlightenment about to occur. 

Finally, the fireworks start at 2:30. This is when V brings Evey to the roof and she has her rain-drenched epiphany.  

At 2:30 there are two strains of music. The lower strings play the Freedom Chords. The sustained notes are strong, stable and growing in power. At the same time, a higher string desperately tries to play the Freedom Chords. Instead it hits that first A again and again in time with the ABCD of the underlying strings. It has recognized the Freedom Chords' rhythm, and can reproduce it, but it can't muster the strength to modulate its pitch higher as the Freedom Chords do. It even falters down a note at 2:40 before recovering. 

These two threads are a musical representation of the visual. In the background of this shot, you have V, strong, already enlightened. He is those low strings playing the Freedom Chords. Evey is that high string, weak, trying to find her footing, trying to reach the power of the Freedom Chords. 

At 2:41 is a rising violin. Its rhythm is similar to the rhythm of Valerie's theme.

***

Valerie's theme was in 5/4 time, an odd rhythm. Most western music is in 3/4 or 4/4. But it makes sense to use 5/4 for Valerie's theme, since society rejects her, as it does 5/4. 

There are two more interesting aspects of Valerie's theme. First, it obscures its 5/4 by randomizing some notes. The irregular rhythm of the notes and that they are played by a soft piano evoke the sound of rain. Rain is integral to Valerie's character. She finds comfort in the rain, that "God is in the rain", as she remembers her grandmother said.  

Second, Valerie's theme is 5 beats per measure divided into a very waltz-like first 3 beats (heavy emphasis on the first and light on the next two), then punctuated by a further 2 beats. This can be heard clearly in a variation of the theme played at 6:03 in "Valerie". 

The waltz-like character of her theme also reinforces her solitary, unique nature. Waltz-like, triple meter beats are characteristic of eccentrics: Jack Sparrow, Wall-E  and Amelie.

***

The movie cuts from V's quarters to the roof, where it's raining. After a couple of seconds, Evey notices the rain, and connects it with the memory of Valerie. This is indicated by her saying, just as Valerie did: "God is in the rain".

The rain is a visual symbol for the memory of Valerie. Through rain her courage, her refusal to submit and her acceptance of death are evoked visually. 

Valerie's memory is also evoked in sound. A lone violin rises with the Freedom Chords in triple meter, which echoes Valerie's theme (2:41 in "Evey Reborn"). 

The rise of Valerie's violin is very connected to the Freedom Chords - its general structure is that it starts level with the Freedom Chord, then rushes past the subsequent Freedom Chord's pitch before that Chord sounds, then falls back to match that Chord's pitch when it does sound, then repeats. It's like when your friend is excited and starts walking faster than you, then doubles back to walk with you, but quickly outpaces you again.  The way the violin very briefly rushes past its next chord and resets itself gives it this breathless, exhilarating lift. Valerie's strings urge the Freedom Chords on: bring on the enlightenment! 

It's the support of a small, beautiful memory that carries the day. 

But, it's the timing of the triple meter allusion to Valerie that is brilliant. These strings start before Evey consciously recognizes the rain, that is, before she says "God is in the rain". They represent an unconscious realization that is working up to her consciousness. 

The Valerie strings are like when you are in a situation that requires a certain word, and you can feel that word, feel what it means and how it sounds and how it's used, but it takes a couple of seconds to remember the actual word. And because you felt the word before you knew it, it's an epiphany when the actual word pops into your brain.

This musical timing of Valerie's strings placed before Evey's conscious realization suggests to us that, before Evey connects the rain with Valerie's memory consciously, she feels the memory of Valerie bubbling up to the surface. The music communicates this complex state of mind, of feeling something before you know it. Through music, the viewer is able to experience this state of mind with Evey.

The music continues to climb. There is an especially nice touch from 3:03 to 3:09, where two variations of a violin melody sound, almost like mirror images of each other, the melody swings like a pendulum from one side to another. This coincides with the visual parallel of V's enlightenment by fire with Evey's by rain - further bringing home that Evey is being freed in a way similar to V. The song ends, like the Freedom Chord progression, not fully resolved, signaling that what epiphany Evey had isn't a solution, but will enable her to do the difficult things that could help. 

This sequence brings with it so many observations. The most important is the power of memories. At some point in your life, when things were grim, you must have remembered something that helped. "Look at the pretty trees," my mom said, when she washed dishes. Her change in perspective, from daily toil to beauty, surfaces when I'm in drudgery. It lightens the situation and allows me to continue. We need to remember these moments, make them for the people around us and search for them when we need them. The more there are, the more likely they will rise up without conscious thought, before we even know what they are, and lead us to a better place, like Valerie's strings.