Cinema, Music and Memory — Ocean’s Eleven and Claire De Lune

The fountains burst into life, lit up by the opulent light of the Las Vegas hotel as the music begins to play — the melodic orchestrations of Clair de Lune.

The men with whom we’ve been following for the previous 90 or so minutes stand together in a line, leaning against the railing as the camera pans across the face of each in turn; Pitt, Cheadle, Mac, Reiner, Affleck, Damon, Caan, Gould. Various manly expressions of solemn satisfaction from a heist well done.

Clooney isn’t there.

He’s away re-uniting with Julia Roberts before heading off to jail, which seems to bother him not one bit.

The fountains fade but the lights still twinkle alluringly in the Nevada night as the collective band of brothers drift wordlessly away while the music plays gently on.

There’s something about this music, the contrasting sections which rise and fall to compare exactly with those lights and those fountains, and the satisfied air of those slinking away into the dark.

A conjuring effect is taking place on the screen, a harking back to another time, another era.

It’s a call out, a reminder that this is a film, a remake no-less, whose roots lie firmly in the past.

Film can be a powerful art form

It can move you and provoke emotion and thought on a cultural scale that many other artistic avenues cannot.

They can be works of beauty; a thing of genius. Haunting imagery, visceral colour, powerful sounds, searing action and awe-inspiring acting. They can provoke debate, court controversy: reflect society and influence thoughts and opinion.

Film can challenge and innovate.

It can capture a moment, raise an issue, immortalise a character or event. It can invent new worlds and re-create old ones: a distant galaxy, Ancient Rome or Medieval Scotland.

It can raise and re-sink the Titanic and bring great leaders and evil warlords back to life before killing them, deifying them or straight out re-inventing their entire history.

Fictional heroes can be brought into existence; immortalised. Wildly imagined, creative stories can become part of the collective consciousness of a society: film as creator of modern myth.

And often, very often, it can just be bloody good fun.

Ocean’s 11 is a pretty shallow heist comedy, with an A list cast, some snappy banter and an effortless way to allow a couple of hours to pass. It’s not a film that’s out to press some social agenda, to make us think or impress our consciences.

It’s entertainment, pure and simple — a thing designed to look good, to sound good and to make its audience feel good for as long as the camera rolls. And in these aims, it tends to succeed.

Bloody good fun.

But something else takes place, for me certainly, on another level.

Something which film in general has always had the power to do. It creates an emotion, sparks a memory.

This scene, and the ongoing association with Claire de Lune that I have in connection to this scene, harks back to another moment in my own timeline.

It conjures not only recollections of another era in cinema, but of another time in life to which I hold dear.

I first saw Ocean’s 11 on a cold January night in Boston, MA, back in 2002.

My wife and I had come out for an impromptu holiday back in an era when impromptu holidays were still possible.

In love with each other we’d fallen in love with city and the region. I already knew Boston, already had an affinity for the place from my student days and an exhilarating year in New England.

But this was different, this was me and my wife — just us against the world.

Still relatively new to marriage and with only ourselves about which to think. Two grown-ups getting used to the idea that that’s what we were, able to head away on a relative whim and find romance in the long avenues after dark, as fairy lights twinkled in the trees along the sidewalk.

Wandering among the red brick townhouses on Acorn Street, the glass and steel of Copley Square — sitting on a park bench eating doughnuts at night, contemplating the future, comfortable in our quiet reflections.

We rented a car and drove up to Salem, then onto Rockport — the quaint old fishing town, quiet in the cold season and surprised by our arrival, young Brits with no reason to be there.

It was already dark when we got back into the city; evening already in full swing by the time we made it out to eat.

An Italian restaurant that seemed to be where everyone else in the city had made for; couples and families; large groups and smaller, intimate gatherings. There was a wait, maybe fifteen minutes.

We took a seat at the bar, ordered a drink. Our nights in Boston had followed similar paths: a meal of varying nationality, a walk and a return to the Irish bar attached to the hotel that played good music and served a decent Guinness.

Out of the large window that stretched almost the entire length of the restaurant I could see the huge billboard of a cinema. An enormous picture of George Clooney and Brad Pitt on a black and red background:

The advertisement for Oceans 11.

“We should go and see that,” I said, nodding towards the huge poster. A film with Pitt and Clooney was something my wife was unlikely to baulk at.

“Tonight?” she said.

I’m not really sure if I meant tonight or was just making a general statement of intent.

“We could,” I said, liking the idea.

Cinema going was a staple in our lives; seeing a film in a large American city centre theatre appealed to us both. We resolved that if it was showing after we had finished our meal then we’d go.

It was.

The cinema was near empty.

Like many aspects of American life the theatre was on a grand scale; as big an auditorium as I have ever been in.

Tired from a day’s exploration and satiated through giant portions of lasagne and a few glasses of red wine, the idea of some visual entertainment in the quiet and the dark, without the need of great exertion on our part, was a winning idea.

We lapped it up, revelled in the sheer delight of it; even if my wife’s version of the film was edited by ten minutes due to an unstoppable wine induced urge to snooze.

We left the cinema at the end, our already good spirits lifted further by what we had seen and buoyed by the fact that the Irish bar was still open on our return to the hotel.

We were twenty eight years old.

Married for almost a year and a half; together and in love an additional three years prior.

We had come together gradually, over a period of weeks late into the summer of 1997. Our growing connection had been exciting, taking me completely by surprise. We shared beliefs and interests: clung to optimistic ideals of the future, where we would submit to our artistic urges and reject the 9–5 normality of the society around us.

For our holiday in Boston we both had to use a week’s leave from our respective jobs.

Normality had got us.

We had succumbed to convention.

Our trip to Boston was, in many ways, the final flourish of our youth. Our night watching Ocean’s 11, a happy affirmation that we still possessed the ability to act on a whim; could still enjoy a moment without care of anything else occurring in the world at that time.

Just over a year on and our first son was born. Our second would follow two years later. Both events mark moments of unbridled love and happiness that continue to this day.

A new chapter, with Boston a fitting close to the previous.

And that’s what I think about when I think of Ocean’s 11. Of the line of A list actors drifting into the night to the strains of Clair De Lune; closing another chapter in the story. My own memories fused to an image of Brad Pitt and a few chords of Debussy.

Because that’s what cinema can do.

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Originally published at http://www.takenotewriting.com on March 3, 2020.