Director Chloé Zhao announced in an interview with Empire that she’s used Richter’s soulful tune for the emotional denouement in her upcoming adaption of Maggie O’Farrell novel Hamnet. But why is the song so popular on the big (and small) screen, and is it at saturation point with its overuse, or has it become a more universal tool to signal cinematic sadness?
‘On the Nature of Daylight’ (or OtNoD, as I’ll refer to it from this point) has become a kind of old poster boy composition that’s wheeled out to ‘hit the feels’, as the younger folk might say. It’s used at pivotal, bittersweet moments in Shutter Island, The Handmaid’s Tale, Jiro Dreams of Sushi, Stranger Than Fiction and the greatest episode of The Last of Us. Just to name a few. According to Letterbox user Rowan Allen (kudos, dude), it’s also popped up in The Innocents, The Children Act, The Connection, Disconnect, The Face of an Angel, Togo, Me and Kominski and Promise at Dawn. And I remember it popping up in an episode of The Trip. And the composition is used yet again in White Night, Sleeplessness in New York, an episode of Luck, Sherpa, Vatanim Sensin, Amazing Stories, Through the Glass Darkly, Kleo, plus episodes from The Light in Your Eyes, 911, Castle Rock and Eastenders. Ok. You get it. It’s used a lot.
But my first introduction to the piece (and Chloe Zhao’s, for that matter) was Arrival. I won’t give away any big spoilers in case you haven’t seen it (and if you haven’t seen it…why? What’s wrong with you, eh? To echo the immortal Michael Jordan meme, get some help. Anyway…), but it’s employed as a sonic bookend to illustrate the main character’s emotional journey. And boy, is it powerful. So powerful to the extent that I became slightly protective of its use in that film and get slightly miffed if I see it used ineffectively in other films (Its use in The Last of Us and The Handmaid’s Tale? Very effective. It’s use in Shutter Island and The Trip? Not very effective). But Zhao describes Richter’s work, which stands at a glorious 6 minutes and 11 seconds, as a ‘spiritual vibration’, something otherworldly that fit perfectly with her film. She describes: ‘Listening to that song, I found myself reaching my hand out of the car window, when it was raining outside, and I had the whole ending in that head’. While it remains to be seen whether that emotional crescendo lands in the film itself, OtNoD has an undoubtable power to summon powerful emotions without words; the addition of lyrics would ruin a serene, blank canvas and take away any mystery or intrigue. Moments spent ruminating on those gorgeous strings would be destroyed by any verbal accompliment.
The decision to use OtNoD comes with a risk with how well-known it’s now become in both television and film. It slightly smacks of unoriginality that an original piece can’t be chosen instead to bring something new into the sonic sadness sphere. Then again, OtNoD has entered an intriguing role of its own as a recognised emotional motif of sorts; you can’t think of that tune with conjuring a multitude of melancholic film moments in your head, and that’s rather unique. Arrival will always be my visual memory point, but hey, the tune’s garnered a universal recognition among film fans at this point, and that, to quote the wise words of Marge Simpson, is ‘pretty neat’.