We're all coming in to the story late. This was Mitch and Mickey's big hit as romantic youngsters in the 60s, peaking in the backstory in a famous live tv performance with a dramatic kiss. Long divorced and estranged, in and out of a psychiatric hospital and out of contact, they're reuniting to sing the song at a tribute show.
Thus, there's a moment of silence built right into the final moments of the song- the moment of The Kiss- that carries great dramatic weight. In context, the brave gesture of love was not enough. These are some of the most meaningful few seconds of silence in modern recorded pop music.
Eugene Levy sings better than you might would expect, but Catherine O'Hara as Mickey really breaks my heart with the openess and vulnerability of the aching of the character singing these tender phrases:
My sweet, my dear, my darling
You're so far away from me
Though an ocean of tears divides us
Let the bridge of our love span the sea
Now, these decades later, she's going back in front of a television audience to sing this song, and knowingly walk into all that heavy emotional fallout.
Mickey also packs a lot into the basic autoharp that is the principle orchestral color of the record. It works very nicely on a basic musical level, really contributing to the earnest Renaissance Fair atmosphere. Yet again, there seems to be symbolic weight to the instrument. She's carrying it around these years later like the embodiment of her broken teenage dreams.
The movie A Mighty Wind is a thing of beauty. The songs written for the movie are mostly pretty outstanding and rewarding a bunch of different ways. And this climactic song, in the movie or just as a stand alone audio recording, contains the whole.
Article comments
1 - Gihan
Great article, I love the song too! Just a minor nitpick --- the word you're looking for is 'principal', not 'principle' which means altogether different.