Gris
Gris' grief
- “A multi-layered story worthy of interpretation?” Check.
- “Unique art style?” Check.
- “Minimalist gameplay?” Check.
- “A name that no one really knows how to pronounce correctly?” Check.
- And last but not least: “An indie soundtrack that acoustically underlines the visual intensity and creates an audiovisual spectacle?” Check.
Art or not, there's no denying it: Gris is beautiful. Not least because of the hand-drawn watercolor style, which we know from Child of Light for example, the story about the grief of the eponymous Gris is a real eye-catcher. But the story itself also offers enough depth for academics to get to grips with it. For example, the University of Cambridge's website A Good Death which explores the (written) examination of death and mortality in media:
The focus on an emotion-driven narrative and the attempt to musically reflect the psyche and emotional world of protagonist Gris presents the soundtrack with the particular difficulty of providing both the accompaniment and the driving element. The Spanish band Berlinist took up this challenge. In the 27 pieces of the OST, the musicians from Barcelona demonstrate their skill in contrasting the deliberate, hesitantly cautious sounds, emblematic of Gris' emotional world, with the cascades of uncontrollable thoughts and fears.
Let's take Perseverance, as an example. Early on in Gris soundtrack, we learn that the piano represents one of the key instruments. Gently and delicately, it paints the picture of a vulnerable woman who is portrayed as graceful, thin and fragile, but equally elegant and graceful.
The piece uses the piano, this symbol of Gris' 'state of rest', as a baseline. Everything is fine - we think. But suddenly emotional chaos breaks in. As in Hans Zimmer's work for Interstellar the organ roars, accompanied by vocals, and for a few seconds covers the piano's serenity. A moment of calm, the seizure is over ... when it starts again. Like a panic attack, we are repeatedly overwhelmed by a tumult of thoughts. It embodies the pain, the fighting down of the tears that break out anew.
This form of wavelike movement, the music that depicts Gris' feelings through its affect-painting ups and downs, is a recurring element of the score (Debris) and nothing new per se for the genre, but excellently realized. In the case of Perseverance the piece does not culminate in an unbridled escalation, but rather a rebellion of emotions. This time, however, they don't overpower us, instead we allow it - controlled, prepared. The final stage of the Kübler-Ross model: acceptance. But not the final stage of the soundtrack.
Another key player in the instrumental line-up is the violin, which is used as a melodic accent in pieces such as Lift or Komorebi . It represents Gris' melancholy, but never reaches the despondency of the cello from the A Plague Tale-series, for example. Moreover, the instrument is not an antagonist, not a ' disruptive' element, but part of the protagonist. In contrast to the flute, which in Komorebi, Part 2 or Environments represents Gris' striving for freedom, for old cheerfulness and light-footedness, the strings ground her ambitions without literally dragging her down.
But just as there is the natural, healthy part of grief, the score also shows the disturbing elements, the doubts and everything that belongs to depression and does not define Gris. An example of this is Comparison, which cuts into the basic aesthetic of this classic score with its distortions. This is contrasted by the harmonizing synths: right at the beginning of the album, Gris, Part 1 with its interplay of piano, strings and vocals, shows what once was, like a No Man‘s Sky . As a direct contrast, at the end Gris, Part 2 celebrates what will be in the form of the triumphant glorification of Gris healing - wonderful!
Berlinist manages the mixture of musical accompaniment and narration in an almost consistently excellent way. The change of pace, sometimes calm and deliberate (Mae), sometimes fast-flowing (Chiasm) and then soulful again (Windmill), provides sufficient variety without diluting the core of the story, the overcoming of grief.
In fact, in pieces like Symmetry , the score reminds me of other great examples like Avatar: The Last Airbender, whose soundtrack has a similarly outstanding narrative component. Only the pieces that are more in the vein of typical soundtrack fare, such as the action-packed Unagi, are a little too much for me ... but that's complaining on a high level and absolutely subjective. It's just the way art is.
Nostalgia warning
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Original Soundtrack
No. | Title | Artist(s) | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Mae | Berlinist |  |
| 02 | Gris, Part 1 | Berlinist |  |
| 03 | Debris | Berlinist | |
| 04 | Lift | Berlinist |  |
| 05 | Meridian | Berlinist | |
| 06 | Chiasm | Berlinist | |
| 07 | Incipit | Berlinist | |
| 08 | Perseverance | Berlinist | |
| 09 | Boundary | Berlinist | |
| 10 | Windmill | Berlinist | |
