There Will Be Blood

Hey, I don't know if this is against the rules or something, but I just finished There Will Be Blood a few days ago, and it's a beaut. A really good movie. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. It is super long, though (2 and a half hours!), so don't get into it unless you have the time. But, really, the reason I'm mentioning it is the music. John Greenwood, the guitarist for Radiohead, actually composed the soundtrack himself, and it's a fantastic use of contrapuntal sound. In parts, at least, which is why I bring it up. But first, just a really good song from the film:

That's just a great atmospheric track to listen to. Nothing really tricky production-wise, but it's a really fun song theoretically, with the piano and cello (I'm assuming it's cello) clashing with one another. And there's the calm and then there's the storm. Just a really good example of schiz without being too overbearing.

But it's the tracks that go out of their way to really let you know something's up that grabbed me. Especially in the shots they were used in. The scenes tended to be relatively uneventful (a man walking or a camera panning), but the suspense from the sound really but the viewer on edge. I feel tracks like these really express the dominance sound can have on an audience's entertainment experience:

How this all relates to something like Faust is that I feel it's a technique that we could utilize to create a sense of dread or foreboding in a way that isn't in-your-face creepy. I feel horror stems from subtlety, and I think this film is an excellent example of that controlled subtlety.