> Finally got around to All Quiet on the Western Front today. I generally
> like Bertelmann's music, though he can be hit or miss. I think he was my
> composer of the year in 2020? Basically, I like some of his stuff, but
> he's not appointment listening for me. So when people basically said his
> score for All Quiet on the Western Front was crap, and I was super behind
> on new scores, I figured it was worth skipping. Then it got an Oscar
> nomination and quickly became the poster child for how putrid and
> underwhelming and awful this year's nominees were. Forgettability bad I
> can shrug off, but a score that's described as *checks notes*
> 'repugnant,...disgusting...the worst score which I've covered that was
> nominated for Best Original Score' and 'actively detrimental' and 'didn't
> crack my top 600' is something I have to investigate for myself. Also I
> gotta write an Oscars piece for FSM lol.
> And in the end...eh. It's fine. I don't hate it. In fact, it *almost*
> works. I can get behind what Bertelmann was going for. It's more on the
> sound design side, with soft ambient strings and a bit of violin and some
> militaristic percussion. It's an anachronistic choice for a World War I
> movie, but it could work. In a lot of ways it feels like Johannsson-lite,
> with the soft thumping and groaning cellos and light electronics, so I
> could shrug it off as a less engaging Arrival-type score.
> Except... (and if you have heard this score you know exactly what I'm
> about to mention)
> Right off the bat, in the first cue, there's an abrasive, heavy on the
> distortion 3 note motif. It shows up every so often throughout the rest of
> the score, and it's just awful. Completely sinks the score. I can almost
> get, conceptually, why it's there. Something about the terrifying
> technological innovations that WWI begat, and so this new chemical warfare
> is a scary, modern thorn that sticks out of the rest of the score and
> setting. Maybe. But also it doesn't work. At all. (On album at least, I
> should probably get around to the film since it raked in a ton of
> nominations.)
> In fact, I think this serves as a good case study in developing
> 'otherworldly' textures or motifs for your sound design score. As I said
> before, this score reminds me a lot of Arrival. Setting aside how this
> score doesn't do as well in creating a compelling soundscape or landing
> emotionally, let's look at each score's One Weird Texture. For All Quiet,
> it's this 3 note motif. For Arrival, it's probably the ship motif that
> blasts out during the early scenes where they go into the ship. (
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHIw-lPxsdQ ) The key difference, for me,
> is that this and the other 'otherworldly' ideas Johannsson uses in his
> score all feel a part of the same score. Yes, the sound is jarring, but it
> makes sense both in the world established in the film, and also just the
> general atmosphere established by the score up to this point. On top of
> that, Johannsson eases into it by playing it softer a few times in an
> earlier cue before the big blast comes. With All Quiet, Bertelmann's motif
> sticks out, even from the modern ambient style of the rest of the score.
> 'But Vikram,' you ask, 'couldn't having that One Weird Texture stand out
> so sharply from the rest of the score enhance the dissonance and really
> sell the awfulness of the thing the OWT accompanies?'
> 'Why yes, Audience Plant,' I reply, 'It could, and for an example of that,
> let's go to the soap bubble!'
> I never actually listened to Annihilation's score outside of context. I
> just remember hating the noise that came out of the trailer. And then that
> same, horrible synthy riff showed up at the end of the film too. Most of
> the score passed me by without any notice in context, I think it was
> mostly sparse ambience with some acoustic guitar noodling here and there.
> But then at the end, oh my god. I hated it, it was so painful. And it's
> perfect. That riff is so godawful and painful and different from the rest
> of the score that it elevates the climax of the film to fever dream
> levels, just a horrible waking nightmare, something truly uncanny and
> skincrawling. (Skip to around 4:45 to get to the riff:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUxFHpDqOH4 )
> That's the way to do it if you want your OWT to succeed by contrast. And
> in Bertelmann's case, the texture of his motif isn't jarring because it's
> something you've never heard before. We've all heard it before. It sticks
> out because we recognize it and we recognize it's wrong, not just
> for the film's setting, but for the score itself. Even on album, where the
> music can exist as its own thing, where you could potentially block out
> whatever the film is and vibe to the score as a CD of mood music, it's so
> clearly the wrong fit with the rest of the score.
> So the upshot of All Quiet, to me at least, is that it's a score that
> could've worked with the approach taken. Some of the pieces are there for
> a decent ambient score. But there's One Weird Texture that neither fits
> into the tapestry of the score, nor is outlandish enough to be truly
> hair-raising. So none of it works, and we're stuck...in No Man's Land.
> Rad-swaggity.
Interesting stuff bud (though of course you had to end it with a pun :P).
I think it basically boils down to this - we know our film music has to service the film, but we also are all weirdo's who like listening to it out of context. Therefore:
- Music can be sound design-y in nature,
- Music can be unpleasant by design, but
- Music can't be both. If it is, then it's not music, it's just painful crap to our ears.
Cause I think of stuff like Cliff Martinez or scores like (whoops, gonna piss you off just by reminding you about it) Upstream Colour, and they are usually quite sound design-y, ambient, textural, occasionally disonant. But I don't find them unpleasant or difficult to listen to; on the contrary, I find them relaxing as shit for the most part.
And then I think of, say, Chris Young's horror scores. Many of them are extremely unpleasant, but that's literally why they exist. That's their purpose and nature, and because they're intelligently done, they succeed.
But what happens when the two twains twixt? Blegh. You get stuff like All Quiet, which to be honest I remember more as being very boring and tedious than flat-out annoying to listen to. And I'm with ya, Volker can do great work (still once again must express frustration that his wonderful Current War score still only exists outside the film in like, two cues on youtube). So I dunno...I get it, I get the hate, though I also see where people who like it, or at least appreciate it, come from.
Arrival still sucks though :P
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