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The music used in movies often steers you in the direction of what the directors and writers want you to feel. From Jaws‘ iconic shark approaching music to “A Thousand Years” from Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2, these songs lead you to having your heart race or feeling your heart warm with love. But of course, all of these movies are not using the same song. Having the music match the tempo of the scene makes for a more impactful experience, so this is, of course, used to amplify your interactions with a scene. “Wait” by M83 has been used in quite a few movies and TV shows, but two that come to mind with very different plots are Perfect Sisters and Five Feet Apart.
True Crime Verses Love Story
These two movies could not be more different. Other than the main characters being teenagers and sharing an unbreakable bond, the two movies follow very different storylines along with being classified as two different genres.
Perfect Sisters (2014)
Perfect Sisters is a movie loosely based on a real murder. It is about two sisters who kill their mother because she is an alcoholic and doesn’t provide a safe home. The girls plan out with friends how to make the murder of their mother look like an accident in order to get her insurance money to live a better life. After about a year, the older sister Sandra begins bragging to people at parties about murdering her mother. She tells this to a family friend, who in return tells the police.
We learn at the end of the movie that the girls’ names are kept secret because they committed this crime as 15 and 16-year-olds and were sentenced to six years in custody and four years of community supervision (( Pazzano, Sam. “‘The hate did blind me’: A ‘Bathtub Girl’ explains why she took her mother’s life.” Global News. November 30, 2020. )). One of the sentencing conditions was that the sisters would not be able to see each other for these ten years, which is when M83 comes into play.
Five Feet Apart (2019)
Five Feet Apart is about two people with cystic fibrosis who fall in love with each other during their stay at the hospital. The girl, Stella, is the typical good girl, following her instructions for her meds to the T and creating apps on her phone to help others as well. The boy, Will, is the typical bad boy who doesn’t care for his meds until he meets Stella. Will is in the hospital for a bacterial infection that is extremely contagious and bad for other cystic fibrosis patients, increasing the need for Stella and Will to stay apart.
Towards the end of the movie, Stella’s best friend, who also has cystic fibrosis, dies from complications to the disease. This causes Stella to adopt a devil-may-care attitude towards the disease and goes off with Will, only to be separated again after her lung transplant. In the middle of the movie, Stella starts to take back things that cystic fibrosis has taken from her, including one foot from the typical six feet apart instructions used with the disease. This is when “Wait” by M83 works its magic.
When M83 Plays Its Part
“Wait” by M83 plays in Perfect Sisters after the two sisters have been sentenced to juvenile detention facilities and have been told that they cannot see each other for 10 years. The next scene shows the two sisters being literally torn away from each other while this song playing. This causes the viewer to feel bad even though the two sisters are now convicted, murderers. We become sympathetic towards the two because we are told throughout the movie that the sisters only had each other against the world, and now they no longer have each other. As the audience, while we listen to M83, we feel hopeless for the siblings going into the next ten years apart from each other.
In Five Feet Apart, M83 plays as Stella decides that she is going to take one foot back from the “six feet apart” rule of cystic fibrosis between her and Will. Instead of this song making you feel sad or hopeless, the song over this scene makes you realize that there is no time to wait; you have to live in the now. Stella explains the complications of Will’s disease and, in the end, knocks on his door to ask if he is willing to take this chance with her just as M83 ends.
How Can One Song Create Different Feelings?
It is an interesting phenomenon how one song over two different scenes can make a viewer feel so many emotions. In both cases, it seems like the perfect scene for the song. Much like telling yourself you only live once, this song can make you feel optimistic or hopeless, depending on the context. Music supervisors are the miracle workers behind picking music for movies and TV shows along with getting permission to use it (( Rinder, Grant. “How music supervisors create iconic TV moments.” Vox. September 15, 2017. )). 2017 was the first year that there was a category for music supervision in the Emmys.
When listening to “Wait” by M83, it starts slow and quiet, gradually building itself up into a lot of sounds happening simultaneously, along with “no time” being repeated. In fact, there are very few lyrics to the whole song, relying mostly on instruments and vocal notes to create an image for you to interpret into your own meaning. Timing this song with these two scenes to have almost the same impact at the same time, the slow build-up to loud chaos helps bring ourselves into that same mindset, even though these scenarios are in no way similar (( McAfee, Ryan. “7 Ways to Use Music to Create Mood and Meaning Onscreen.” Pond5 Blog. n.d. )).
While I love Five Feet Apart and the storyline behind it, Perfect Sisters doesn’t necessarily make me want to watch the movie multiple times because of the story. However, “Wait” by M83 has made me revisit Perfect Sisters multiple times just to view that scene again and feel the panic and horror that pours through the TV screen as the two sisters are ripped apart, and M83 begins repeating “no time.” Music has a way of amplifying the stakes of a scene for the viewer to understand what is happening, and these scenes with “Wait” by M83 playing are great examples of that.