Jamie Foxx<\/a> was cast as musician Nathaniel Ayers, but the narrative was restrung, swapping his primary instrument \u2013 the double bass \u2013 for the cello.<\/p>\nSuite soul \u2026 Emily Watson as Jacqueline du Pr\u00e9 in Hilary and Jackie. Photograph: Maximum Film\/Alamy<\/p>\n
You can see why. Not only does the cello have that uncannily human register, it\u2019s also visually dynamic. A cellist\u2019s bow strokes are physical and expressive, and the performer\u2019s face is rarely obscured \u2013 making it a perfect screen partner.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s probably why cellists tend to be the beating heart of musical dramas. Gu\u00f0nad\u00f3ttir also scored Cate Blanchett\u2019s tour-de-force T\u00e1r, in which a cellist becomes the catalyst for the drama. Christopher Walken\u2019s cellist, struggling with Parkinson\u2019s, is the centrepiece of 2012\u2019s A Late Quartet, and Dermot Mulroney (a real-life cellist who played on the scores of multiple Mission: Impossible films) frequently guest-starred in Prime Video series Mozart in the Jungle.<\/p>\n
Heartstrings \u2026 Jamie Foxx in The Soloist (2009). Photograph: Dreamworks Skg\/Allstar<\/p>\n
But cellist characters are not confined to musical dramas. The cello\u2019s emotional shorthand has been transcribed across almost every genre: from Chlo\u00eb Grace Moretz in sci-fi romance If I Stay, to Maryam d\u2019Abo in 007 adventure The Living Daylights, to cellist love interests in sitcoms from Frasier to New Girl. And then there\u2019s the darker side of the cello, whether channelled by Michelle Pfeiffer in supernatural thriller What Lies Beneath, Uma Thurman in neo-noir Jennifer 8 or Jenna Ortega in Netflix\u2019s smash series Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a gothic connection to the cello,\u201d says Gu\u00f0nad\u00f3ttir, who won her Oscar for scoring Joker, a soundtrack that features the instrument prominently, with its neck being \u201cchoked\u201d. \u201cWhen it\u2019s played in an ugly way \u2013 because we yearn for it to be this beautiful instrument \u2013 it feels uncomfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Director Richard Shepard took that darker side one step further in 2018 with The Perfection, a horror set inside a prestigious music academy. When choosing the instrument his two leads would play, he wanted something both sinister and sensual.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember growing up on the Upper West Side of New York City, near Lincoln Center,\u201d he says, \u201cand seeing these young cellists on the subway, lugging these huge cases. It stuck with me. How big it is. How much effort it takes to not only play it, but just move it. When writing The Perfection, we felt that physicality could make a statement. It\u2019s sexy. It\u2019s a sexy instrument.\u201d<\/p>\n
The film-makers behind the Allison Williams-starring horror film were determined to make the cello playing as convincing as the scares. \u201cIt was really hard work,\u201d says Shepard, \u201cbut I\u2019m proud there are only two shots of musicians\u2019 hands rather than actors\u2019 hands in the entire film.\u201d<\/p>\n
High-toned \u2026 Alan Rickman in Truly, Madly, Deeply (1990). Photograph: BBC\/Allstar<\/p>\n
The cello is an instrument actors can\u2019t bluff their way through \u2013 it\u2019s harder to fake than hiding your hands behind a piano or overdubbing a singing voice. Ortega trained for Wednesday and earned Golden Globe and Emmy nominations. Watson trained for Hilary and Jackie and got an Oscar nod. Pascal recently told Vanity Fair that taking on the cello was \u201cliterally the hardest, hardest, hardest thing I\u2019ve ever had to learn to do.\u201d If he\u2019s angling for awards, there are few better bets than a deep, introspective stringsman.<\/p>\n
And that perception extends beyond the screen. David Cohen, the principal cellist of the London Symphony Orchestra, says that \u201cthere\u2019s definitely a stereotype that cellists are the orchestra\u2019s empaths \u2013 warm, thoughtful and just a little bit intense. I\u2019m not sure it\u2019s entirely true, but it\u2019s amusing that film-makers so often cast cellists as the emotionally intelligent ones. You rarely see the villain saying: \u2018Just let me finish my Bach Suite \u2026\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Cohen adds that the cello\u2019s versatility often shapes the characters written around it. \u201cIt can sound noble, lonely, hopeful or quietly heroic \u2013 often within the same phrase,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s the Meryl Streep of the orchestra. And, because it has the depth to suggest sadness without wallowing in it, the cello is also film music\u2019s favourite therapist.\u201d<\/p>\n
Catherine Warner is a music therapy practitioner who has long watched the cello play its introspective, insular part on film. But she also points to the instrument\u2019s role in memorable cinematic dialogues. In The Witches of Eastwick, a devilish Jack Nicholson seduces Susan Sarandon\u2019s cellist during a duet, which Warner says \u201cseemed to symbolise Sarandon\u2019s character\u2019s sexual awakening, as well as her discovery of authentic emotional expression \u2013 she had previously struggled to bring that into her playing\u201d.<\/p>\n
In Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, Paul Bettany plays a cello bass line under Russell Crowe\u2019s virtuosic violin flourishes. Warner says this \u201csymbolises a close supportive working relationship whereby the soloist can be freer to express their brilliance\u201d. The cello, then, is a literal baseline: a \u201cstraight man\u201d that performs whatever emotional function the story needs.<\/p>\n
Devilish \u2026 Jack Nicholson and Susan Sarandon in The Witches of Eastwick (1987). Photograph: Landmark Media\/Alamy<\/p>\n
Warner also returns to something she once wrote in a collection of essays: \u201cSymbolically, the cello can evoke the sense of the instrument being rather like a person.\u201d And this gets closest to explaining Hollywood\u2019s obsession with the instrument. More than any other member of the orchestra, introducing a cello is like casting another actor in a scene. Gu\u00f0nad\u00f3ttir even says that \u201cthere\u2019s something about the size of it being quite close to the human body \u2013 not to mention the shape of the cello almost looking like a torso.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pair its resemblance to the human body with its similarity to our vocal range, and it\u2019s no wonder cinema loves the instrument. It\u2019s a character actor in and of itself. It can be embraced, fought, comforted or strangled. Now we just need to wait for the inevitable Oscar category: best bowed string instrument in a leading role. It\u2019s either that, or Pascal runs the risk of having his cello nominated ahead of him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s a throwaway line in 2012\u2019s The Avengers, after a character\u2019s death, when his partner is alluded to.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":575688,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[321,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-575687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=575687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/575688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}