The Best Music in Film

Simon Pummell

(Bodysong)

S&S: What is your favourite film soundtrack music and why do you like it so much?
"Among my favourite soundtracks are the Michael Nyman soundtracks for Peter Greenaway and the Philip Glass for Godfrey Reggio; For me these combinations of film-maker and composer work in a complex conversation with each other, rather than the music somehow always underscoring the picture. My absolute favourite moment of interaction between music and picture is in A Zed and Two Noughts (1985); about two thirds of the way into the film the mourning twins Oswald and Oliver have set up their whole range of bizarre time lapse shots of decaying animals in their lab: Then as the camera tracks back through the lab the clicking and whirring of the film cameras and the flashing of strobe lights syncopates with the really heartbreaking music theme create a music/picture synchronisation as dense as one of Disney's Silly Symphonies, and yet also a really dense emotional image of the the whole film's pre-occupations, that emotions will always overflow our attempts to hem them in with obsessive rationality. Another favourite pairing is Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti. I guess it is significant that in each of my favourite pairs the music is not purely scored to picture, but created in parallel to the picture track, becoming organic to the process of writing, shooting, editing. The most effective sequence for me in my own films is in Jonny's soundtrack to Bodysong (2002) the film builds to a climax, after language has been introduced. After portraying how we learn language using the basic sounds we can make with out mouths, building up into words and sentences the soundtrack threads many of the previous themes into one so music that we've associated with very different acts and emotions from conception of a baby to violence combine into a single wall of sound."
Last Updated: 29 Sep 2008