Samsung hired ‘The Piano’ composer to write a score for a movie about a washing machine
Maybe it’s crass consumerism — or a comment on how far we’ve sunk as society. Or maybe it’s some kind of 21st century homage to Andy Warhol’s…challenging cinematic output. One thing we know for sure is that it’s 66 minutes of a full washing machine cycle, scored by award-winning composer Michael Nynam — the dude behind the soundtrack to The Piano.
Where does a minimalist composer go after writing music for an Academy Award winning film featuring a naked Harvey Keitel? Writing a haunting score to accompany images of wet clothes spinning around— a slow cinema homage to Samsung’s QuickDrive washing machines. Nynam noted that the world’s longest (and dullest) appliance ad comes 300 years after Handel premiered “Water Music.”
He also added in an interview with The Guardian, “The idea of this intrigued me … putting a score to something so visually repetitive and prosaic. As a film composer you are frequently taking a cue from the drama on screen or interpreting it sonically, but here the challenge was to offset the mundanity and also enhance the hypnotic appeal.”
All that Samsung money probably didn’t hurt, either.
The announcement comes a little over a year after the company capped off a rock 2016 by issuing a voluntary recall encompassing 2.8 million washing machines. That bit of bad PR had one consumer walking away with a broken jaw. This time out, worst case scenario, a full theater of people fall asleep when the movie premiers at Leicester Square in London’s West End on December 5.
The rest of us will be able to lull ourselves to sleep with the film when it hits YouTube a day later. Meantime, enjoy the other great musical homage to the appliances that keep our clothes clean.
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