In Pairings, artists and creators pick the movies that complement their latest work.
Son Lux is a post rock/electronica band known for their albums At War with Walls & Mazes, We Are Rising, and Lanterns. They also composed the Academy Award-nominated score for the film Everything Everywhere All at Once. Their new album Out Into is out now!
We asked the band to pick a few movies that pair well with Out Into. Here’s what they wrote about them.
Mysterious Object at Noon
This one comes to mind immediately because, as a viewer, you can really feel how fun it might have been to make. The playful, unscripted style of filmmaking, in which locals in each setting were recruited to improvise their telling of a simple story, yields results that feel like they would have been nearly impossible to imagine or plan. We went into the first sessions for this record with no plans, no strategy—just a trust in each other and in the process and a place to get together and discover what the music wanted to be as we went along.
Millennium Actress
This film is largely through the lens of a retired legendary actress looking back on her life and career, and through her memories and accounts her life and her roles in films blur together. It speaks directly to how every entrance in life is also an exit, and that it is through these transitions in life that we evolve and grow.
Little Joe
The juxtaposition between beauty and danger is so artfully portrayed, and the gorgeous score by Teiji Ito creates an unnerving tension that grips you with every scene. The use of color is bold and provocative, but betrays your expectations in the most delightful way.
Yojimbo
This is cinema at the highest level, but it’s also entertaining at the highest level. It goes through these beats that are alternatingly hilarious and thrilling and swaggering and stylish, but if you pause on almost any frame it’s a masterclass in cinematography. There’s an economy to the visual composition, often just a few elements juxtaposed against each other with the utmost care in conveying depth and contrast.
High Life
The film leaves a residue on you that is hard to wash off. It is disturbing and dismantling, and successfully creates a sweaty vision of a future dislodged from any kind of anticipated linearity. It is both eternal and ancient, primal and sacred. While the attempt wasn’t to make an album as harrowing and haunting as Claire Denis’ sci-fi masterpiece, the perversion of time and pacing and the casting of André 3000 feels like a nice corollary.
The Way Things Go
Rube Goldberg action painting but as meditative durational sculpture. Shapes and objects and incidents toppling over each other in a choreographed pageantry of patience and precision.
