Todd Giles
another window, while at the same time peering directly into the audience, a
strategy Anderson similarly used in The Royal Tenenbaums when introducing
the characters looking at themselves in mirrors, behind which the viewers are
situated.
house while the music continues, sounding slightly different depending on
where in the house we are, we eventually come to a narrow hallway, and,
Anderson’s intertextual self-referencing that works similarly to the way he
to tell what the small framed pictures on the wall depict, if paused, we see
two more primitive paintings, these of future locations in the movie: island’s
lighthouse and phone station, and Fort Lebanon, which appears toward the
tight shot of the boys eating breakfast around the kitchen table; behind one
is another metatextual image, that of Jack’s Church at nighttime, a setting
development of the plot.
Suzy walks out the front door, storm clouds gone, with a box under her arm
and binoculars still around her neck. Was she looking for the mailman, who,
as we will learn shortly, arrives by plane? Suzy goes to the mailbox, which has
“Summer’s End” spelled out in hardware store letters, and retrieves a letter
addressed to her from “Sam Shakusky / in care of / Billingsley Boy’s Home.” In
another bit of meta-referencing, we see that the letter, which was mailed August
stamp showing a picture of Scout Leader Pierce (played by Harvey Keitel) in
next movement. Suzy reads the letter, to which we are not privy—we know
only from whom it was sent—and looks directly at the viewer, perfectly in sync
with the whole orchestra coming in to complete the work, before folding Sam’s
letter and placing it in the box marked “Private” she carried outside with her.
removing the needle from the record, the music once again diegetic.
Not only does Anderson experiment with music which sheds light on
plot content and music that is both inside and outside of the action, he also
experiments with how that music acts as a framing devise leading into and out
of scenes. Music (and other sounds) often overlap scenes before the actual
settings change. For example, we hear the beginning of Britten’s Noye’s
Fludde (performed one year earlier) while Sam and Suzy are looking at one
year’s performance at St. Jack’s Church. Here the music acts both diegetically
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