“Ground control to Major Tom/Ground control to Major Tom/Take your protein pills and put your helmet on.” So goes the opening lines of David Bowie’s 1969 hit Space Oddity.
In view of its title alluding to a film (specifically, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey), it seems appropriate that Space Oddity has been referenced in motion pictures. For instance, in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Ben Stiller’s habitual daydreamer is nicknamed Major Tom by a scornful senior executive who catches him spacing out on more than one occasion.
In a key scene, the film’s protagonist is told by the woman he loves that Major Tom is actually a figure of courage. And in a later sequence, the song plays as he is inspired to take a daring leap of faith.
So strongly is Space Oddity now associated with The Secret Life of Walter Mitty that it seems strange to find it in another film, and one released in Hong Kong just a few weeks later. But cinemagoers who take in Italian auteur Bernardo Bertolucci’s Me and You, which opens here on January 16, will find the song also put to good use in the drama about an unhappy teenager who prefers to seclude himself from the world.
There are certain songs that I will forever associate with a particular movie, including some that were not written with those cinematic works in mind. Among these is When I Dream, a beautifully wistful song by Scottish jazz singer Carole Kidd that was used to wonderful effect in the 1999 South Korean action-drama Shiri.
“When I was actually making the movie, I didn’t know about the song.