Primary navigation
The Best Music in Film
Fernando Meirelles
(City of God)
- S&S: What is your favourite film soundtrack music and why do you like it so much?
- "I find Paul Thomas Anderson's way of using music in his films extraordinary. Usually he doesn't cut the music in to pieces; he uses the entire piece, and mixes it with the dialogs in a loud level. I don't know any other director who has the courage to do this. It works very well. The soundtrack I like best, from all of his films, is the one from Punch-drunk Love (2002)."
- S&S: In what ways does music best enhance a film?
- "In the obvious way: Music or its absence is the soul of the film."
- S&S: Which film either has music that you wished you'd written or is one you would like to rescore and why?
- "There is a sequence, in City of God (2002), where Shaggy runs away from the police in which I cut off all the sound and the only thing left is an old Cartola recording. Cartola is one of Brazil's most traditional samba composers; our Cole Porter. Unfortunately the mixer in Los Angeles decided to "enhance" the quality of the recording, filtering, remixing the guitar duo and the bassoon and making it all sound greater, in 5.1. It was a real pity. Most of the music's charm was gone. It was a pretty song in an old stereo recording. It lost its simplicity, but it is still a very nice moment in the film."