between the November 1 and 2 is celebrated on Day of the Deadone of the most important festivities in Mexico, and in commemoration it is time to remember one of the films that best portrays the spirit of these dates. Cocoreleased in 2017, was one of the most acclaimed Pixar films in recent memory.
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The winner of Oscar for Best Animated Film It served to vindicate the importance of this holiday and all the meanings behind it. And to understand Coco It is impossible not to mention the soundtrack.
Coco and music as a narrative resource
Coco unfolds in Saint Ceciliaa fictional Mexican town, where he lives Michael Riveraa twelve year old boy who wants to become a musician just like his idol, the popular singer and the deceased Ernesto de la Cruz. However, there is one obstacle: In his family music is practically prohibitedbecause his great-great-grandmother Imelda assumed that her husband had abandoned him in his attempt to develop a musical career.
Her parents and great-grandmother, called Cocoare dedicated to the production and manufacture of footwear, but Miguel does not want to follow that path, so decides to build his own guitar to enter a contest for Day of the Dead. However, when her grandmother Elena discovers that he had been secretly learning to play the instrument, he completely destroys it.
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Miguel is presented with an incredible revelation. At the family altar, his great-great-grandfather with a blurred face appeared with the same guitar as de la Cruzso he understands that he may be related to his idol. That is why he goes to his mausoleum to steal the iconic guitar, but when he strums it he is transported to another dimension where he can communicate with the dead.
The film builds a bridge between the world of the living and the world of the dead, mainly to explain the relationship we have with death and with our origins. In this way, Miguel is always in search of his identity, and music works as the main vehicle to transmit that feeling.
For this, a team was assembled with big names such as Germaine Franco, Adrián Molina, Robert Lopez, Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Camilo Laraall under the leadership of Michael Giacchinowho expressed: “The musical composition of Coco It comes down to what is best for this story? What is the best way to tell this story? Is it a musical? Or is it a drama? Or maybe it’s a film about music with good regional music? “It all comes down to what works best for this movie.”
The soundtrack is strongly inspired by the Mexican popular song and crosses genres like the mariachi, the banda, jarocho, marimba, the romantic trio, the norteña or the bolero. Furthermore, Miguel’s connection with music enriches the story, which has extremely interesting sound passages that end up forming the backbone of the feature film.
“Remember me”, the motif throughout the entire film
The star song of the film is “Remember me”and bolero transformed into a lullaby that serves as a motif throughout the entire film. And it is based on the main conflict that surrounds both the film and the festival itself: we must not forget the dead. Those who lived before us must be honored and remembered in order to understand where we come from.
The winner to Best Original Song of the Oscar 2018 was composed by the couple Robert Lopez y Kristen Anderson-Lopezwho already had experience in the field. In fact they composed “Let it go“the main ballad of Frozenwhich also won the Academy statuette in 2014. That was why the director of Coco, Lee Unkrichthought of them for this difficult task. “We got excited, we were salivating to find the right song for this beautiful and emotional idea. It was something so strong that it made us cry just thinking about it,” they expressed in an interview with The Excelsior.
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Unkrich’s request was specific: he wanted the song had an emotional depth and had the feeling of the love of a father towards his son when he knows that he has to go far away to work.. The couple’s present at that time was in a similar situation. With two children, ages two and six, they had to travel to Los Angeles for long work days, so they spent a lot of time without them.
“We also understood very well the power of a lullaby for your childrenone that they could sing at night to feel that their mother was there. And that’s what I put in the words,” Kristen explained. To accommodate their artistic vision to the musical framework proposed by the project, the artists listened to the work of names like Javier Solís, Jorge Negrete, Lola Beltrán and Pedro Infante.
“I put all that in my head, started playing, and We were very lucky that it came about. I just sat at the piano and the melody came out“commented Robert, who found himself crossed by the death of his mother in 2019: “She passed away in August of last year and since October we have put a Day of the Dead offering in our house, in fact, I don’t know if I am authorized to do it, but her absence made us more bearable, because it brought her back, as if was there. That’s why this song is for her“.
Embed – Gael García Bernal, Lucy Hernández – Remember me (Lullaby) (From “Coco”/With lyrics)
