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Movie directors with a sonic signature

Spocko

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... and Dead Poets Society was some of the worst drivel I've had the misfortune to encounter. Nothing else has left any kind of impression ... ;-)
ROFL I think it was directed to a certain generation - I was a teen when I saw it, literally the age of the kids in the movie (my classmate Dylan played Richard Cameron!) and it resonated with me mostly because it was a "coming of age" movie for boys who were stuck with John Hughes movies that were a bit too superficial for many of us.
 

bluefuzz

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ROFL I think it was directed to a certain generation
Yes, I probably saw it when it was on tv a few years after its release when I would have been in my mid to late 20s. Not that I would have thought any better of it at a younger age. Of course it doesn't help that I get a violent allergic reaction to anything involving Robin Williams ... ;-)
 
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jsilvela

jsilvela

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Babel by Alejandro González Iñárritu has this scene that follows a deaf teen in Tokyo getting high and going to a club. Intermittently, the sound goes off as you see it from her perspective, and it frames how she’s out of place. It’s a beautiful and heartbreaking scene, beginning with the Ryuichi Sakamoto score.

 
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jsilvela

jsilvela

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Trey Parker and Matt Stone. I can recognize their movies blindfolded. Part of it is knowing their voices.
But, who else could have had Satan sing a song and do a falsetto?

 
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jsilvela

jsilvela

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Michael Cimino, for good and bad. He makes music part of the movie like the best of them.
I mean, I think "I love you baby" is beloved especially thanks to Deer Hunter and Walken and De Niro.
Cimino, too, has a Nolanesque tendency to disregard the audibility of dialog.

And so in Heaven's Gate, one of my favorite movies, there's this brilliant dance on skates, but, good luck hearing what Jeff Bridges tells Isabelle Huppert.

 
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jsilvela

jsilvela

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I had a file with names, and had three more directors left in it. I'ma let me finish.

Two English directors that should be better known.

Terence Davies, like Malick, sometimes makes his films poems rather than narrations.
His latest, Benediction, is from 2022 and is a series of moments from the life of poet Siegfried Sassoon.
I cannot recommend it enough.
Below is a poem-scene, but the movie also has more traditionally narrative sections.


By the way, his House of Mirth may be a better adaptation of Edith Wharton even than The Age of Innocence by Scorsese.

Then there's Mike Figgis, who is a musician I think, and also makes films with terrific taste and soundtrack.
There's One Night Stand, and also, with perhaps more musician cred, Stormy Monday

 
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jsilvela

jsilvela

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Atom Egoyan, shockingly, slipped my mind when I started this thread.
I think he's definitely one of the most identifiable and personal directors when it comes to sound.

There's Exotica with its dense and hypnotic sound.
His latest, Guest of Honour, has a score by Mychael Danna as usual, and a song by Amália Rodrigues in a scene, cause Egoyan has great taste.

But for me The Sweet Hereafter is just outstanding. As with all of Egoyan's movies, but even more so, you could play this movie with your eyes closed and it would still be a heck of a movie.
I could think of very few directors who could tell this story.

 
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Herbert

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Atom Egoyan, shockingly, slipped my mind when I started this thread.
I think he's definitely one of the most identifiable and personal directors when it comes to sound.

There's Exotica with its dense and hypnotic sound.
His latest, Guest of Honour, has a score by Mychael Danna as usual, and a song by Amália Rodrigues in a scene, cause Egoyan has great taste.

But for me The Sweet Hereafter is just outstanding. As with all of Egoyan's movies, but even more so, you could play this movie with your eyes closed and it would still be a heck of a movie.
I could think of very few directors who could tell this story.

I think the video clip is the final scenes of the movie, like an epilogue. "The Sweet Hereafter" is told in nonlinear fashion, but still follows the linear "Three Act Rule" of a classical screenplay. To my memory, there was no music in the entire movie - except the end. Interestingly it has, because the music blends very well into the background.
 
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jsilvela

jsilvela

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in the spirit of single sonic servings:
Orlando by Sally Potter, 1992, based on the Virginia Woolf novel.

Jimmy Sommerville as a juglar is a particularly bold idea.
Atmospheric electronics that somehow fit.

 

Herbert

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... and Quentin Crisp as Queen Elisabeth. I remember how the soundtrack, starting with a drone, softly engulfed me in the cinema when I watched it back in 1992.
Great use of the surround channels. Fred Frith played the guitar parts, Jimmy Sommerville reappears at the end as a singing angel, floating in the sky
Also the techno - like music in 1992 London was great. And I hate Techno.
I have the soundtrack on my portable player, one of my favourites, though heavily Nyman-influenced.
But almost nothing is known of David Motion who co-wrote the music with Sally Potter. Just five soundtrack credits on imdb from 1992 to 2006.
 
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jsilvela

jsilvela

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I've recently discovered Ryusuke Hamaguchi. His Drive My Car won the Oscar for "international" (cough cough) movie in 2022.
I've seen all of his movies that I've been able to get my hands on. He's a major talent.
Fantastic taste for integrating ambient sounds, music and dialog. And he does so in a completely natural way.

From his brilliant 5+ hour work Happy Hour:

 

Axo1989

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I also have a list of things to watch from this thread, thanks to the OP and many others.

When I discovered and first watched some of the Dogme 95 films it was a minor revelation: that soundtrack music had became a clumsy, overly melodramatic crutch and how refreshing it was to take a break from that. Now I continue to appreciate films that use non-diagetic music and sound more sparingly, many mentioned here already.

Bong Joon-ho's Parasite, which I heard in a good theatre just before the pandemic closed them, proceeds with minimal musical accompaniment, but deploys the commissioned pieces for maximum effect, including the great sequence when the interloping family execute their plan against the housekeeper, set to the 7-minute classical composition by Jung Jae-il. Despite the overblown audio heroics of many big-budget films, that was also the first film that made me think a multi-channel system might be worth the effort.
 
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Herbert

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I've recently discovered Ryusuke Hamaguchi. His Drive My Car won the Oscar for "international" (cough cough) movie in 2022.
I've seen all of his movies that I've been able to get my hands on. He's a major talent.
Fantastic taste for integrating ambient sounds, music and dialog. And he does so in a completely natural way.

From his brilliant 5+ hour work Happy Hour:

To be honest, I have problems with self-referential arthouse cinema like that of Ryusuke Hamaguchi. As an antithesis to the hectic blockbuster cinema or plastic soaps, every shot is overlong and gives itself loaded with meaning. But it only does so because the viewer goes to the cinema expecting to appreciate a film with overlong, meaning-laden shots. The style does not derive from the story nor does the maker care to invite the "average" viewer to accept his style, unlike a Bela Tarr or Andreij Tarkovski.
Thus, the pneumatic hissing when the man listens to the pregnant woman's belly, or the breaking 'of the masichen - athmo when she opens her eyes, remains only gimmick.
Dogma '95 was also "invented" so as not to inhibit the actors and to give them room to improvise. It was a liberation, much like the introduction of handheld 35mm cameras in film, which allowed shooting on location. Many Dogma films were shot on digital video. With "Parasite," I was pleased,
that the film was edited on Final Cut Pro 7, which has been discontinued since 2011, just like my own film, which was not completed until 2021. A nice example that you don't have to go along with every "innovation"....
 
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jsilvela

jsilvela

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To be honest, I have problems with self-referential arthouse cinema like that of Ryusuke Hamaguchi. As an antithesis to the hectic blockbuster cinema or plastic soaps, every shot is overlong and gives itself loaded with meaning. But it only does so because the viewer goes to the cinema expecting to appreciate a film with overlong, meaning-laden shots. The style does not derive from the story nor does the maker care to invite the "average" viewer to accept his style, unlike a Bela Tarr or Andreij Tarkovski.
Thus, the pneumatic hissing when the man listens to the pregnant woman's belly, or the breaking 'of the masichen - athmo when she opens her eyes, remains only gimmick.
Dogma '95 was also "invented" so as not to inhibit the actors and to give them room to improvise. It was a liberation, much like the introduction of handheld 35mm cameras in film, which allowed shooting on location. Many Dogma films were shot on digital video. With "Parasite," I was pleased,
that the film was edited on Final Cut Pro 7, which has been discontinued since 2011, just like my own film, which was not completed until 2021. A nice example that you don't have to go along with every "innovation"....
Taste is a personal matter, so I won't debate you but will tell you why I like Hamaguchi.

I love Tarkovski, but do not find Hamaguchi in the same approach or "school".
My perception of his long takes is the opposite of yours. They are not "meaning laden".
Rather, Hamaguchi is gazing. Similar to what Terrence Malick does where he's just looking at grass or the sky or someone walking.

Several other directors fall in that school of being contemplative. For example, Jim Jarmusch has some long shots of Tilda Swinton walking, with no ulterior significance than the pleasure he takes in them. And I'm all for it.

Now, saying Tarkovski is more welcoming to the "average" viewer than Hamaguchi … well depends what you mean by "average" :)
 

Herbert

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Taste is a personal matter, so I won't debate you but will tell you why I like Hamaguchi.

I love Tarkovski, but do not find Hamaguchi in the same approach or "school".
My perception of his long takes is the opposite of yours. They are not "meaning laden".
Rather, Hamaguchi is gazing. Similar to what Terrence Malick does where he's just looking at grass or the sky or someone walking.

Several other directors fall in that school of being contemplative. For example, Jim Jarmusch has some long shots of Tilda Swinton walking, with no ulterior significance than the pleasure he takes in them. And I'm all for it.

Now, saying Tarkovski is more welcoming to the "average" viewer than Hamaguchi … well depends what you mean by "average" :)
It is not a matter of taste, but a matter of craftsmanship. The style should follow the core of a story.
With filmmakers like Tarr, Tarkovsky, or Malick, the style is nourished by the metaphysical core of the narrative.
A Malick relates images, off-screen voices, and music to one another, depicting a dreamlike state and establishing a meta-level.
With Malick, the waving grass is charged with meaning precisely because the viewer knows that shells are about to hit there (Thin Red Line)
or because the death of the son/brother is being mourned. (Tree of Life)
Again, the meaning of the images is deeply anchored in the story.
With "Tilda Swinton" you probably mean "Only Lovers are Left Alive".
Again there is a reason for the rythm - it is a fantastic story.

But with Hamaguchi we have an ordinary event - a woman boards a ferry.
What takes place here is a cinema that only uses the style of "art cinema".

Oh, by the way:
And so in Heaven's Gate, one of my favorite movies, there's this brilliant dance on skates, but, good luck hearing what Jeff Bridges tells Isabelle Huppert.
It is Kris Kristofferson.
 
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jsilvela

jsilvela

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In Malick, the waving grass is charged with meaning precisely because the viewer knows that shells are about to hit there (Thin Red Line) or because the death of the son/brother is being mourned. (Tree of Life) The meaning of the images is deeply anchored in the story.
strongly disagree. Malick is possibly my favorite director, and part of what I love about him is that often, he simply looks.
This drives some of his actors crazy, as their closeups get edited out in favor of something else like a crooked tree or a dog.
Malick probably appeals to me because my head works the same way.

Malick, like Jarmusch, like Terence Davies, like Atom Egoyan, do plenty of looking in their work.
Their movies are not all metaphor and meaning. Sometimes a shot is there because it's beautiful.

Tilda Swinton gets to walk coolly in two Jarmusches at least. Only Lovers (brilliant movie, I agree), and Limits of Control. She's also fabulous in The Dead Don't Die, but I don't think she gets a strutting sequence.

It is not a matter of taste, but a matter of craftsmanship.
Oh, come on.
 
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jsilvela

jsilvela

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Oh, by the way:

It is Kris Kristofferson.
No.
Kris Kristofferson is in the scene.
But Jeff Bridges is there skating at times with Isabelle Huppert and then playing the violin, then telling her something as she's helping him out to get some air as he's drunk.
I very much meant Jeff Bridges.
 

Herbert

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Oh, come on.
No problem. I am doing films, not consuming them.
Doing a "good" film always means to analyze, no matter the genre.
One forming occasion - already 25 years ago - was working with a director who started as a critic and film scholar.
After a week of editing, she took the rough cut home and changed sides:
Her "scholar" - self analyzed what her "director-self" liked.
Very often, the "taste" did not stand the analysis and we reworked the scene.

strongly disagree. Malick is possibly my favorite director, and part of what I love about him is that often, he simply looks.
This drives some of his actors crazy, as their closeups get edited out in favor of something else like a crooked tree or a dog.
Malick probably appeals to me because my head works the same way.

Of course you sat with Terrence Malick in the editing room and did talk with the actors "who got crazy".
It is just the perpetuated rubbish from film journalists.
I´d rather stick to articles like this:
 
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