As the sung voice of Mary (Jesus' mother) in the Passion of the Christ, and as well as adding an exotic flair to the music of Avatar (see this track), she has been prolific in the films of recent Hollywood past, but in specific I wanted to focus in on her experience (as recounted in the book "Soundtrack Nation") of her time on the film Munich.
Specifically, she sings on the track "Remembering Munich," a part of the soundtrack composed by John Williams. Listen to how she describes the rehearsal process:
My experience working with John Williams and Spielberg was life-changing. […] The piece was so hauntingly, heart-wrenchingly beautiful that when I began to sing it, I lost myself. […] As the last note hung in the air, I opened my eyes…and waited. John sat at the piano staring straight ahead. He said nothing. My breath shortened, and I began thinking that I'd lost the job, that he hated my singing, that the language approach was all wrong…and on and on…and then Mr. Williams turned to me, and he had tears in his eyes. I was taken aback. He said, "I don't know how you do what you do with your voice, but it is rapturous. Rapturous. You sing as though your soul is 800 years old."The day after, she recounts a similar reception from the orchestra and Steven Spielberg after the first take. "That experience healed so many wounds in me," she says. Spielberg reportedly was taken aback too, telling her that her voice had become "the soul of his film, the atonement for all the wrongs mankind has committed."
This seems to be one of those unique times within the Hollywood film business that the music reaches people in a way that nothing else could. I know of one other time this occurred with Williams's music, and that was the hymn he wrote for Saving Private Ryan, another Spielberg film, which reportedly was a very moving experience when it was recorded. But why is that? Is it the subject matter, the intense weight of the films that causes people to respond this way? And what about Lisbeth Scott's voice makes her such a good fit for situations like this?
As she says of herself, she made the conscious choice to "always use my voice and words to heal." Perhaps this is why she turns up in music such as this, and why music is absolutely necessary in films with such a weighty subject matter — that it is one of the few channels through which healing can flow.
