The Needle and the Lens: Pop Goes to the Movies from Rock 'n' Roll to Synthwave 
By Nate Patrin
University of Minnesota Press, 2023

The University of Minnesota Press has published a slim second book from music writer Nate Patrin, which strives to examine the relationship between sixteen films and the songs “lifted,...  appropriated, or revitalized” within. The author's first book, Bring the Beat Back: How Sampling Built Hip-Hop (also from University of Minnesota Press) certainly informs his work here, with several of the film selections involving this genre. It’s clear he was built upon this knowledge, adding extra depth to what he can give on those specific intersections between music and film, although diversity of the chapters indicate a broad understanding of numerous genres.

For the reader, this book would definitely benefit from being a full multimedia experience. Watching the films, or at least the main sequences that feature the song mentioned in each essays title, would bring further depth and understanding to what is being written about. While it is possible to read this book as a standalone endeavor, knowing the material of which Patrin is exuberantly writing about greatly enhances your enjoyment. Each short essay chapter examines an individual film and draws attention to one particular sequence within it, along with the song that accompanies those scenes. The author works hard to make each engaging and informative, with a generous helping of wit that can only come from an expansive knowledge of both subjects. That is not to say that Patrin does not lead you along if you're not familiar: he capably describes and captures the feel and actions that appear in each film, so you can understand the connections that he is trying to draw to the reader's attention, even without having seen the film yourself.

This goes not just for the individual movements within the film but the history, the context of where the film was situated in the culture of the day. Saturday Night Fever, a film which today we think of as the epoch of the seventies disco music dance craze, Patrin is correct to point out that it was rather the end of that era. The film captured the finale of that movement, with even the film itself abandoning disco by the end, having attempted to complete the growth of the main character by having graduated him out of his dancing lifestyle and into a person who can move past that escape.

When discussing Quentin Tarantino’s film Jackie Brown, the author explores our relationship to the past through song. Tarantino is often difficult to properly study, as his films tend to be almost entirely referential to past works, combined into a unique “retro-pastiche.” Patrin earnestly evaluates the director’s artistic relationship and provides a referendum on nostalgia itself:

 …Do we appreciate old things because they stir up happy memories, or because we want to figure out what these works mean to us now? Do we want to reminisce, or do we want to discover? Is there such a thing as corrective nostalgia, where the idea that a work has fallen out of fashion require an attempt, not to justify why it’s dated, but why it mattered in the first place? …[W]hen it’s a world that leaves us in the lurch, threatening us with constant signs of obsolescence and disposability, there’s a more important reaction to it than irony. It means internalizing the idea that you can always bring a little piece of the past with you, something to remind yourself where we’ve come from.

This book is not just about that context, it is about genuinely examining the subject in a way that it deserves. It is easy to dismiss a work about popular film and music as frivolous or unworthy of scrutiny. The author proves this to be incorrect. Culture is a part of us, and it can be brought to life in a unique way through a film’s use of new or familiar songs. Combined with the powerful imagery of a film’s vision, that music can imprint upon and leave us forever marked by them: giving us emotions we would never have experienced otherwise, emotions that can be recaptured as an echo when we listen to the song alone.

The closing chapter is a listing of twenty four more film selections, where the author has chosen to write a brief paragraph on each. Those twenty four deserved to be fully realized like the other films in this trim work. While the book cannot give us that, it will have most likely added to all of our collective watchlists. With the knowledge of the other essays, those suggestions might nudge us to question what that relationship is between all film and music we choose to consume, and what it gives back to us in return.

Christopher Kumpa is a Psychology graduate of Toronto Metropolitan University. He lives in Ontario, Canada.