IS IT JUST ME… OR SHOULD SOUNDTRACKS NOT BE LISTENED TO BEYOND THE MOVIE?
As you can probably imagine, movie soundtracks frequently clog the airwaves in the Total Film office. So it makes me pretty unpopular when I veto the latest OST from the office stereo. Well, I say veto… I normally end up doing a silent protest with my headphones, while the offending LP spins.
It might seem weird that a movie obsessive like me would want to keep all film music a safe distance from my ears when outside of the viewing experience, but hear me out.
For me, the true power of film largely comes down to its ability to synthesise so many sensory stimuli into one satisfying piece of storytelling. So it doesn’t seem right to just rip out one element to enjoy in isolation. More importantly, however, listening to those themes repeatedly will gradually diminish their impact.
Does Vangelis’ legendary Blade Runner score have the same impact after it has soundtracked your elbow-to-chin rammed daily commute? Would Max Richter’s heart-swelling ‘On The Nature Of Daylight’ still hit you square in the feels when it bookends the opening and closing moments of Arrival if you’ve listened to it on repeat until you’ve wrung all of the emotional juice out of it? And what possible use would Hans Zimmer’s pulse-pounding Dunkirk music have outside the film, besides scoring a particularly intense deadline?
Familiarity breeds boredom, and no movie-watching experience is as exciting once you know every cue, beat and key change, your brain absent-mindedly tracing the film’s rhythm ahead of the action. To single out a recent example: the yearning melancholy of La La Land’s ‘City Of Stars’, so heartfelt and poignant on screen, becomes cloying when listened to again and again. Scores are definitely the most problematic for me, but even a curated soundtrack – such as the hit Guardians Of The Galaxy mixtapes – provides too much of a shortcut to the film’s structure.
In the same way that being too familiar with a scene from a trailer or an overused publicity still can pull you out of the moment when it pops up on screen, soundtrack-listening can equally ruin the viewing experience, so should be avoided at all costs. Or is it just me? Share your reaction at www.gamesradar. com/totalfilm or on Facebook and Twitter.