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And secondly, I’m thinking, ‘Robbie Robertson just wrote a song for me! This is crazy – it’s surreal.’ The thing that’s always struck me about Robbie’s work is that he writes songs that you feel like you’ve heard all your life, and that’s the way I felt about this song-it just felt timeless. Structured as a series of flashbacks occasioned by an accident on the job, the film traces the career of young Jack (Joaquin Phoenix), as he lies damaged and. “I just sat there thinking, ‘I’m very moved by this song I think it’s beautifully poetic,’ and it was exactly what I was looking for. “It was very odd,” Ladder 49 director Jay Russell says of the experience of sitting in Robertson’s studio while he played the freshly written song on the piano for the filmmaker. “Shine Your Light,” which is both an anthem and a hymn, leaves a similar impression. “Shine Your Light,” the song he came up with, seems cut from the same rich fabric as Robertson’s classic work with The Band-visionary songs like “The Weight,” “King Harvest (Has Surely Come),” “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” and “It Makes No Difference,” which he seemed to snatch whole from the American collective unconscious. So I sat down and something started to come to me, and I thought, ‘This has a connection to it, but it’s not right on the nose.’” There were 90 ways that this doesn’t work, and a few that you may be able to get by with. “It was so well done, and so moving,” he says, “that, at the end of the movie, I thought, ‘Well, if I don’t give this a shot, then I’m just a jerk.’ It’s so soulful, the way this story is told, and so moving, that I told them, ‘Listen, I’ll see if I can think of anything I don’t know.’ Because this is almost a setup to do something that could be corny or maudlin. But as he watched Ladder 49, Robertson found himself captivated by this inside look at a group of Baltimore firefighters. What’s more, he’d never written a song expressly for a movie. Although he’s composed several scores for his friend Martin Scorsese, Robertson has little interest in the field of movie music overall, and he’s turned down many such projects over the years. Ladder 49, on the other hand, is much better. As long-time readers may recall, I found the Ron Howard blockbuster mawkish and exploitative - a crass thriller that seems at odds with its human drama.
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Like the blue-collar society the film's characters do their best to emulate, Ladder 49's reflective yet ultimately safe soundtrack is the audio equivalent of a Sunday roast.When Robbie Robertson agreed to watch a rough cut of Ladder 49 after being queried about writing a song for the film’s climactic scene, he didn’t plan on taking the job. The movie that Ladder 49 most closely resembles is, of course, is Backdraft. Composer William Ross' emotive score may only get seven minutes at the record's end to sum up our heroes failures and achievements, but it's as effective an emotional tool as the Pogues "If I Should Fall From Grace With God" is a rousing and timely salve to wounds both new and old. In the case of Ladder 49, the firefighters of the Baltimore Ladder Company curse, drink, laugh and grieve amidst the adult-alternative strains of David Gray, Sam Phillips, and Robbie Robertson. Producers and directors know that a dramatic or comedic montage featuring a familiar voice or song resonates deeper - sometimes - than a composer's more studied offering. Which one Joaquin Phoenix in Gladiator, or John Travolta in Wildhogs 1616. Song-based soundtracks have become the norm in Hollywood these days.A firefighter, injured and trapped in a burning building, has flashbacks of his life as he drifts in and out of consciousness. Audio Mixers: Chris Lord-Alge Patrick MacDougall. With Joaquin Phoenix, John Travolta, Jacinda Barrett, Robert Patrick.