A lot of things on the surface of Hulu’s Candy are pleasant. Its idyllic imagery and music lull you into suburban bliss. There is something sinister simmering beneath the surface, however, and that darkness is married to deep loneliness for both of the women at the center of this true crime saga. Composer Ariel Marx captures the heavy emotions and brutal violence between these women, and she traps you in a world where you should be happy and satisfied.
One of the most notable things about Marx’s score is how intentional the placement of music is. She doesn’t overload these five episodes with lurid, over-the-top music, and she instead focuses on the emotional state of these women. This is a story of violence, but it is also about two women tragically trapped by their own circumstances.
“Starting with episode one, that is the day in the life of Candy and Betty and that is to illustrate the routine of their daily lives. The routine and the mundanity of it. A lot of time and care went into the idea of washing machine and dishwasher sounds and all the domestic sounds you hear as a housewife. That was designed to be an ever-present soundtrack in someone’s life. When the score breaks through in episode one, it’s very much about setting up Candy’s theme and the idyllic life and the domestic bliss. A lot of that is the joy and satisfaction of being a housewife and a mother, and that is illustrated through some melodic themes of the score. When we start to break through to some of the honesty of the characters’ perception of their lives, the score becomes a lot less melodic and more rhythmic, hypnotic, and violent. Score is very subjective–as is the story. Robin Vieth always says the show is about two women who walked into a utility and one women walked out. It is, by default, very subjective, and the score follows this weighted point of view.”
The opening title sequence is one of the best of the year, because of how it invokes the tone of the entire show. The visuals, by Imaginary Forces, capture the essence of Marx’s score so well. Her score sounds like you are stuck on a rollercoaster with pauses that will make your heart stop before the next plunge, but the pleasant piano notes are nostalgic and comforting.
“That was so delightful to do, and the people who I worked with at Imaginary Forces were incredible. It was such an honor to do a main title sequence. It was one of the first theme I wrote for the show, and it was before I knew we were going to have that sequence. They ended up sending that to the title designers, and originally it was in a different form. The melody started in a different place, so I tweaked it. They illustrated to the music in a very intentional way, and a lot of the movement was done in response to the music. The circular quality is to show how you can get stuck in this endless loop or this endless cycle of life. It showed Candy and Betty’s simmering frustrations and loneliness and everything underneath the surface that they can’t express. That theme is meant to be stuck in this dreamlike, oppressive sameness. That word was used in the script that very much informed my writing.”
There are a lot of true crime limited series this season, but Candy unexpectedly wants the viewer to not just see the crime but the connection between the characters played by Jessica Biel and Melanie Lynskey. Perhaps if they only were allowed to speak of their unhappiness, they might have had a different relationship.
“Candy, very much like Betty, is just as dissatisfied, but she has a much stronger coping mechanism in how she presents herself. Both women suffer from such boredom. Betty’s thematic work really shows how much she tries for her family and her children, but she doesn’t quite make it towards the brightness of Candy’s themes.”
The track, ‘I Hit Her,’ made me feel itchy, and that tone is much different than the nods to domesticity throughout the rest of the score. It sounds like it exists on a higher plane, and that is probably because it Marx used it to show the visceral violence that comes in the final episode. It’s very much about a character not being able to take it anymore.
“That comes in the fifth episode where we finally see what happened in the utility room, and that cue was meant to be the musical representation of fight of flight mode. Candy is triggered by a certain phrase, and she loses sense and control of her mind and body. She becomes a provoked beast, a provoked animal. That cue was meant to be guttural heaves and sighs and exertion. I wanted it to sound like catching a prey. As far as we know that’s what happened in that utility room. On top of it, there are traces of Candy’s melody, because this is very much her point of view and we don’t know how much truth really is in it.”
Marx and I spoke a lot about sameness or the circular feeling that traps these two women. The track, ‘Oppressive Sameness’ is a perfect example of how this suburban life is supposed to be a paradise, but the wants and needs cannot be expressed. There is suffering in the silent repetition.
“It is one’s best attempt at being satisfied, but you will hear how repetitive it is. The music gets stuck in its own loop and there are awkwardly long pauses. There is a key change near the end to sort of remind oneself, ‘I’m happy and this is enough for me.’ The very subtle variation is to meant to paint this ‘here we go again’ mindset, and that was very much intended for the structure of the music.”
Towards the end of the score is a track titled simply, ‘Candy.’ Marx even plays with our thoughts of the word itself. Candy, as a sweet, is supposed to glossy, inviting and almost shiny. You want to want it. When we think of the word associated with Candy Montgomery and the crime associated with her name, our perception of the woman ‘who has it all’ is torn away from us. Marx uses heavy piano notes to knock us off-kilter.
“That was the first theme I wrote, and the main titles were derived from that. It is a dreamy, lush melody but a violent weight to how the piano is being played. You hear the hammering and the attack of it. There is definitely an allusion to the spontaneity of the violence from a woman who has had no history of it. I wanted it to simmer. There is also a lot of moments of repetition and looping and unfinished potential, and there were a lot of talks in terms of the flirtation of that potential. In a lot of these melodic cues, there is a sense of not finishing a phrase correctly or transitioning with an awkwardly long pause or one more iteration that you don’t expect. It’s about putting on a front for this suburban life while also seeing the cracks in the façade.
Candy illustrates how almost anyone is capable of doing unnatural, horrible acts of violence. The juxtaposition of homegrown, all-American euphoria with bloody, senseless violence is one of the most disturbing qualities about this series, and finding that violence was something the creative team spoke a lot about.
“One of the things we talked about in our initial talks is violence in ordinary objects. Red Kool-Aid being poured into a pitcher or a knife opening up a package of cookies or a chicken tenderizer or an orange juice blender. A lot of these objects, if you look at them subjectively, can have a violence to them, and that was meant to show how the piano is being played. It’s a single succession to them being played, but why are they being played in that way?”
Candy is available to stream on Hulu.
