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Ramsay's Approach to Sound
Expressionist Uses of Natural Sound
In these extracts from You Were Never Really Here (2017), Ramsay shifts the level and dimensions of specific natural sounds (arriving trains, passing cars, doors opening and closing) to create a form of subtle expressionism that suggests the psychic dislocation of the protagonist. Her approach creatively combines the sonic separation and emphatic precision of Robert Bresson with the synthetic sound-music constructions of Stanley Kubrick.
Bresson organized his soundtracks around highly specific sounds that are correlated with discernible objects and surrounded them with virtual silence (the background sounds are equally precise). As a result, the viewer experiences sound more intensely than in everyday life. In the sequence from A Man Escaped (1956) below, this treatment of sound creates a sense of immensity that spiritually elevates Fontaine's attempt to escape from prison.
Kubrick was equally meticulous, but used the combination of discrete sounds (like the matching helicopter and tank noises in the clip from Full Metal Jacket below) and music to blur the lines between different levels of perception, representation, and experience.
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Ramsay conceives of sound in terms of a dominant motif, which is located somewhere within the world of the film. In the opening scene of We Need to Talk About Kevin, she concentrates on the usually mundane sound of a sprinkler. Through repetition and gradual shifts in the level and dimensions of the sound, it becomes progressively more disturbing and eventually merges with the sound of a gunshot (like the association of the tank and helicopter noises in the sequence from Full Metal Jacket above).
Ramsay thereby firmly roots us within the fractured subjective space of a mother traumatized by the violence perpetrated by her son.
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Film Music
