Films › Sound and score
No Country for Old Men
Directed by Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, 2007
Carter Burwell's score is nearly inaudible by design, so the film runs almost entirely on room tone, wind, boots and mechanical sound. Skip Lievsay's design makes the air compressor a character through timbre alone. Tension is built by making the audience listen for a specific sound rather than by cueing them with music. The motel sequence is a masterclass in offscreen space defined purely by audio. The Coens have said they wanted almost no score at all and used Burwell primarily for texture beneath key transitions, which meant Lievsay's sound team effectively had to compose the film's emotional line using recorded and foley elements instead of music cues. Footsteps on carpet versus tile, the click of a door latch, and the hiss of the captive bolt pistol are all mixed at levels that force a theatrical audience into complete silence, which is precisely the effect the filmmakers wanted and a rare instance of sound design carrying what would normally be a composer's job.
What to watch for
Watch the motel scene and notice how much of the geography you construct from sound alone.
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