MicMacs a Tire-Larigot

Music by Raphael Beau

 

 

 

 

 

One more delirious and welcome comic adventure of Jean Pierre Jeunet, Micmacs a Tire-larigot (2009 Milan Records), has newcomer composer Raphael Beau, with works for theater and for Cirque Du Soleil on his curriculum.

Jeunet tells the adventure Bazil (Dany Boon) whose life is changed by a loose bullet and committed his life in a crusade against the armaments industry. Much of sympathy and humor of the film is merit of the music that assumes the French tradition of accordions or piano waltzes. The main theme, Diabolique, returns in several versions always on nostalgic and satirical approach. Nostalgia is reinforced in the use of excerpts from soundtracks by Max Steiner. In a key sequence for the film, Bazil watch the movie The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946) and the soundtrack of this film brilliantly extends the "real" sequence. Other moments include music of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) and The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), sometimes used for irony or nonsense way as in the scene when Bazil finds the building of armaments manufacturer. The cartoonish narrative of Jeunet benefit greatly from the "musical pantomime" of the soundtrack that in some passages assumes the emotion as in Saint-Eustache or techno-retro sensuality of La Diva Du Porno or more musical consistency in the beautiful waltz Blue Train. Including tango, mambo, circus marching, street-organ music, Micmacs is a work of rare sympathy in the contemporary production.