Media and Music: The Music of “Amelie” and How Yann Tiersen’s Score Reflects Innocence and Curiosity Through the Lens of European Romanticism
Composed with a focus on musical elements native to French music and brought to life by melodies that embody the colorful world of the young eponymous protagonist, Yann Tiersen creates a score that is a notable standout amongst avant-garde movie fanatics.
In Media and Music, our writers take a deep dive into how movies use scores and songs to engage viewers, give new meaning and tone to some of our favorite scenes, and establish themes. It almost goes without saying, but there are spoilers abound.
Written by Mar Carmona
Images courtesy of Claudie Ossard Productions
Yann Tiersen’s score for the 2001 critically acclaimed film, “Amelie,” captures the essence of innocence through the rose-colored lens of the French landscape, tying together the story of a curious Parisian waitress Amelie. The film follows Amelie as she navigates through the streets and corners of Montmartre. Following a series of events that develop the young girl’s character as one driven by a desire to experience and a drive to connect others with her own sense of playful adventurousness, the main plot revolves around her adventures as she attempts to find the owner of a mysterious book of passport picture-like photographs. Leaping across train stations, carnival rides, and leaving clues for the mysterious admirer at locations displaying the beautiful French landscape, the film culminates in the reunion between her and the mysterious man-turned-love-interest after a hefty cat-and-mouse chase. The film uses musical elements native to French music and plays around with experimental sounds using objects involved in the film, such as a bicycle wheel during one of the tracks. The score also utilizes contrasting instrumentals to display the juxtaposing innocence of the main character as she navigates through the startling reality of the real world. Through this sound, Tiersen captures the fleeting nature of romance, contentment, and the importance of finding pleasure in life’s small details.
Composed of light, upbeat, nearly childlike sounds with hints of French romanticism, the movie’s score captures the magical and mysterious nature of the main character, Amelie, and her angelic sense of observation and curiosity. The film opens with the track “La redecouverte (The Rediscovery),” which follows Amelie’s childhood moments, consisting primarily of melodies featuring upbeat xylophones reminiscent of childlike nursery rhymes, bringing out a sense of imagination and youth. This sense of innocent curiosity is present within every arrangement in the movie, including those that are comparably gloomier, such as “Le Moulin (The Mill),” which features a slow melodic sequence lightly played on piano for the majority of the track. “Le Moulin (The Mill)” does not make for a dark or somber tone, but merely a sense of melancholic, innocent nostalgia. Tiersen intentionally does this to display how even during Amelie’s more downbeat moments, her fascination with the world still remains.
Tiersen’s score also creates a sense of duality within Amelie’s character, as it's built from songs that have nearly identical titles, yet juxtapose themselves in terms of mood. For example, the score’s most critically acclaimed song, “Comptine d’un autre ete, l’apres-midi (Nursery Rhyme of Another Summer, Afternoon)” manages to evoke a childlike wonder through a slow, somber piano melody. Similarly, the song’s counterpart, “Comptine d’un autre ete: la demarche” is introduced later in the film with a fast, upbeat piano melody that illustrates the more radiantly joyful side of Amelie’s curiosity. Even though Tiersen executes both in different ways, there is a similarity in how the tracks make the audience feel the character of Amelie. This similarity lies in how the tracks truly allow the listener to be transported into Amelie’s perspective of playfulness, enabling the listener to feel the depth of her attention to the beauty of the details around her world in Montmartre. “Comptine d’un autre ete, l’apres-midi” is used multiple times in the film, especially when Amelie uses her spontaneous curiosity to help others, bring people together, or allow others to find a sense of wonder in the mundane. The entire film’s recording through a yellowish-green tint supplements the nature of its music, as Tiersen’s work highlights Amelie’s unique admiration for the authenticity of human behavior and the world around her, placing this character as the avant-garde poster-child for the film archetype of the “manic pixie dream girl.”
The score incorporates an array of instruments ranging from a traditional grand piano to accordions and vibraphones, and even uses natural sounds to highlight the dreamy allure of the film’s French landscape. Building on top of Tiersen’s implementation of European romanticism, “La Dispute (The Dispute),” one of Tiersen’s previously composed songs that was used for the film, involves a turning bicycle wheel. The track famously plays in the opening credits of the film, as we are shown a combination of clips of Amelie as a child. In several clips, she is playing with fruits, knocking down dominoes, and playing with coins, amongst other activities. Here, Tiersen’s song introduces us to the simple beauty behind Amelie’s innocent curiosity as a child, while combining the use of the bicycle wheel, a French trademark. Tiersen uses accordion-led orchestras in most of the songs on the soundtrack to highlight the importance of French culture in the role of Amelie’s character development and natural state of inquisitiveness.
Accordions are inherent to the nature of traditional French music, historically originating from the Bastille district of Paris and being referred to as the “Bal-Musette.” The sounds of accordions play through her journeys across traditional Parisian markets, calling attention to the sounds and sights of street vendors, the turning of bicycle wheels, and alternatively the calm nature of French countryside life is one of the most meaningful components that contributes to the dreaminess of the score. The use of musical elements to combine both the grandiose and fast-paced essence of French city life and the quiet, intimate moments within the gardens and family kitchens of the French countryside make the listener want to fantasize their way on one-way flight to Paris-Charles de Gaulle (CDG), if only to drink a petit cafe at the “Cafe des 2 Moulins” served by the mysterious Amelie.
Among the film’s romantic instrumentation are a few mellow arrangements that fill scenes with a sense of absolute nostalgia. The audience gets a look into Amelie’s past and how her childhood memories trigger her feelings of the present. Tiersen’s composition represents how nostalgia can allow us to look into the past not in sorrow, but in gratitude. This nostalgia is brought out through the combination of sounds reminiscent of childlike melodies, including the use of xylophones. Amelie’s character has several moments in the film in which she goes out of her way to create an eye-opening sense of nostalgia for strangers, friends, and the people around her. In an early scene, Amelie finds a small box full of trinkets reminiscent of someone’s stash of old memories filled with toys, movie tickets, marbles, and old photos. Upon returning it to its owner, she mysteriously leaves it in a phone booth and watches from across the street as the older gentleman begins to scrummage through the box and recount old memories associated with all of the trinkets. The song “Le Moulin (The Mill)” plays in the background as the piano introduces a melodic sequence led by a single clarinet that is isolated in the beginning. Adding a mixture of other melodies in between with the accordion, and with the piano building slightly in speed at the end, the song both begins and ends with the same light, nostalgic sound. The track transports the characters back to fleeting memories of the Tour de France, a childhood toy set, and the sound of marbles hitting cobblestone in the school playground. Tiersen successfully plays with the sadness traditionally associated with nostalgia and turns it on its head, bringing a sense of satisfaction and beautiful euphoria to the act of remembering the past.
There is no doubt that Tiersen’s work on the score for Amelie, as well as his contributions from his previous albums onto the soundtrack, have created a lasting legacy for fans of classical music and film. “Comptine d’un autre ete, l’apres midi” has been one of the most influential pieces of the composer’s work and has been praised by pianists. The music’s focus on the intimacy of human nature innate within the film’s plot has made Amelie one of the most culturally significant pieces of work in film, even inspiring a 2017 Broadway musical adaptation of the flick. Undoubtedly, the music of Yann Tiersen in this 2001 film brings out the innate beauty of the human spirit, the magic within life’s small moments, and the curious little French girl that exists within all of us.