The Absence and Intensification of Musical Influence on the Perception of Time - Text 3
In the scene of the first stairway, the musical transcription of an external pressure is felt. It is the influence of the place and thus, directly or indirectly, of the “Mat” or Fool (the unnumbered arcana in the Tarot of Marseille, symbolising a solitary character wandering outside the world). Out of this comes omniscient and plural music which is difficult to decipher at first. This formal texture, as heavy as it is perceptible, will become an inner drive: the young woman is irremediably drawn by this stairway, which nevertheless rejects her (she finds herself teleported farther and farther away). Ethereal choruses, symbolic of the lost souls who appear to welcome her in the fool’s domain, gradually detach themselves from the percussive sounds with a rhythmic dynamic and a strange temperament. The ascending movement, coupled with the illusion of the constant acceleration of resumptions set in the same obsessive gesture, increases in dynamic intensity and appears to inflict great pressure on the character, physically pushed to action beyond reason. Strangely, time appears to be stretched in the final seconds, when the tension is highest, as the music appears nevertheless to continue to accelerate. This musical paradox resonates with the many dreamlike surrealist incursions specific to the story and the place (a corpse in perfect condition in an automobile that has been completely calcified, arbitrary teleporting, sudden appearances and disappearances triggered by a change more psychic than physical, etc.) and induces the next event. Indeed when the young woman is teleported a third time, farther yet, the intensity of the music drops suddenly to a very low volume, audible in the distance (as if it still emanated from the stairway, which we suppose to be off-screen) before finally being closed down. This drop is like a cut because of the violence of the change (from fortissimo to pianissimo), all the more so because it is synchronous with a change of shot. For a few fractions of a second the viewer must interpret the nature of this change, as does the protagonist, who remains motionless for a while to gather her thoughts. The viewer must thus realise that this is not a silence, as the gesture continues behind the newly appeared murmurs. When the protagonist begins to walk this once again imposes a visible tempo, and the obsessive gesture moves away for good. This experiment in making the viewer aware of the sound produces the stretching of time that is perceived for a few seconds.
In conclusion, the temporal effect of music when it takes on a vital narrative role is dominant compared to other streams contributing to the narrative. Music increases its impact on the viewer if it brings a new narrative element, without affirming or contradicting another “priority” stream (the images or the dialogue). This crystallisation of time suspends the viewer’s perception through the effort of transferring his or her attention from one stream to another.
This is confirmed even more so in that it is involved in the narrative no matter the dramaturgical means used, as a subject and as a world.[7]
