Popular Culture Review
[i]n order to show how a big symphony orchestra is put together,
Benjamin Britten has written a big piece of music, which is made up of
smaller pieces that show you all the separate parts of the orchestra.
These smaller pieces are called variations, which means different
ways of playing the same tune. First of all he lets us hear the tune
or the theme, which is a beautiful melody by the much older British
composer Henry Purcell.
As soon as the record begins—as if orchestrating the bringing together of
brothers Murray and Rudy come out of their rooms in turn as they go to sit
the attic stairs holding her cat, entering a small room with a piano painted the
same orange-red as her dress (also seen in one of the lamp shades across
the room). She grabs her binoculars and joins her brothers in the other room.
Perched above and behind her brothers on a window seat (we will see her
perched atop the stage set dressed as a raven in Noye’s Fludde later), Suzy
Shelly and the Secret Universe,
hinting at her own “secret universe” as she lifts her binoculars to peer out the
changes from being inside the movie—that is, from playing inside the house—
of the house, its property, and the water it overlooks. We see, then, a real-life
shot of the replica we just saw hanging on the wall.
The camera then cuts, during a slight pause in Britten’s work, back
wall separating them. Other than the opening thunder clap, it is not until Suzy
the middle ground, father in the background) that we know something is awry
with the otherwise perfectly balanced (and tonally muted) Bishop household.
That, and the fact that her parents never appear in the same room, much less
speak to one another as the camera pans through the house. Indeed, there is
always at least one wall separating the couple as the camera pans though the
set. Laura Bishop, Suzy’s mother (played by Frances McDermand) sits with
Murray) is seated just feet away, but a room apart, reading the newspaper at
soon ride to see her lover, Captain Sharp, played by Bruce Willis. The camera
stops in front of Suzy, who has moved between her earlier look outside when
the camera panned outside of the house, as she looks out what we assume is
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