Westerman picks 4 movies to pair with ‘A Jackal’s Wedding’
In Pairings, artists and creators pick the movies that complement their latest work.
Will Westerman is an English synth pop musician whose new album A Jackal’s Wedding is out on November 7 wherever you get your music!
We asked Will to pick a few movies that pair well with the new album.
Let the Corpses Tan (2017)
The way this film looks comes back to me often when thinking about how to try and colour the sound in the music. This is a delirious, gory caper through the desert with only a suggestion of a coherent narrative. It includes some of the most striking cinematography I have seen. The sense of heat coming off of the film and the sense of fraying were elements present already in A Jackal’s Wedding, and became central to my thinking of what to push.
The Devils (1971)
This is a film which has been regularly banned, including as recently as 2001 in Finland. It’s a debauched, moralistic hellscape exposing the self-serving manipulation of fear which we continue to live through cyclically. It’s a grotesque film in the line of Hunter S. Thompson’s autofiction but without the humour. A seething piece of defiant cinema which should be raised up while living through periods such as these.
Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
I was 14 when this film came out, so it coincided with the time in which I started trying to construct my own things on guitar. The visual representation of multiple worlds coexisting with equal validity was something that struck me and something to explore for myself in very rudimentary musical form. I love this film. Magical realism at its zenith where the lines between become indistinguishable. All the things I’ve made would be different without this film.
La Strada (1954)
Marta has a cat called Fellini, and without Marta the record wouldn’t exist. This is my favourite Federico Fellini film. It’s a beautiful, largely desolate film, but there are, along its journey, small acts of kindness to keep both the protagonist and the viewer from falling into total despair. It’s a meandering film unconstrained by the burden of moral duty, and all the more devastating for it.