No country for old men: The sounds of silence 21 Jan 2008

The New York Times' Dennis Lim on the sound design for No Country for Old Men:

"There is virtually no music on the soundtrack of this tense, methodical thriller. Long passages are entirely wordless. In some of the most gripping sequences what you hear mostly is a suffocating silence.

"By compelling audiences to listen more closely, this unnervingly quiet movie has had the effect of calling attention to an underappreciated aspect of filmmaking: the use of sound. (Several critics, including A. O. Scott of The New York Times, have singled out the sound design for commendation.) 'Even in a movie like this where people think the sound is minimal, Ethan Coen said in a recent interview, 'it's actually maximal in terms of the effects and how they're handled.'

"What is unusual about 'No Country for Old Men' is not simply the level of audio detail but that it is a critical part of the storytelling. Skip Lievsay, the sound editor who has worked with the Coen brothers since their first feature, 'Blood Simple' (1984), called 'No Country' 'quite a remarkable experiment' from a sonic standpoint. 'Suspense thrillers in Hollywood are traditionally done almost entirely with music,' he said. 'The idea here was to remove the safety net that lets the audience feel like they know what's going to happen. I think it makes the movie much more suspenseful. You're not guided by the score and so you lose that comfort zone.'"