Any high street outside a UK shopping centre.
Under The Skin
Ooo.
A signal from a mothership?
A failing of machinery?
An interference of emotion?
The noise of life humming away?
For us, those three notes are a unique and uniquely terrifying experience.
A perfect use of sound to elevate an accomplished sci-fi to a technical masterpiece.
One can only imagine what Scarlets alien feels when she hears them.
The Grand Budapest Hotel
The Grand Budapest Hotelis a place that doesnt exist.
The surroundings in question?
InThe Grand Budapest Hotel, though, theres no pop music in sight.
Instead, the existing tracks come courtesy of Eastern European composers.
Out goes Hank Williams, in comes Nikolay Osipov.
Bye bye Beach Boys, hello Pavel Kulikov.
That Slavic sound fills the entire score.
No better is it summed up than by one of the final tracks, Nikolay Osipovs Kamarinskaya.
A simple bass soon starts to leaps in fifths an on-the-beat anchor that asserts a steady, regular momentum.
The two never really combine, though; they just keep beating out their own separate paths.
One word sums this all up: balalaika.
Balalaikas (and lutes) are all over the shop, their malleable sound washing everything in old-school charm.
That hint of farcical silliness is reversed when Zero and Goustave encounter the psychotic Family Desgoffe Und Taxis.
Meanwhile, the films emotional identity its location within Wess canon stems from what Desplat does with it.
The score climaxes with the standout track JG Jopling, Private Agent.
While being chased by Willem Dafoe.
ThatsThe Grand Budapest Hotel; an old-fashioned piece of civilization located on the brink of destruction.
A plucked string against an army of noise.
you might readIvans previous instalment of Music In Film here.
