Reviews

"....Deakins' stunning location work and precision framing is joined by Jess Gonchor's production design, the Coens' cutting under their usual pseudonym of Roderick Jaynes, Carter Burwell's discreet score and expert sound work to make 'No Country for Old Men' a total visual and aural pleasure." - Todd McCarthy, Variety, May 18, 2007 (Cannes).

Carter's Notes

The film is the quietest I've worked on. Often there is no sound but wind and boots on hard caliche or stocking feet on concrete. Then sporadically there are shootouts involving an unknown number of shooters with shotguns and automatic weapons. It was unclear for a while what kind of score could possibly accompany this film without intruding on this raw quiet. I spoke with the Coens about either an all-percussion score or a melange of sustained tones which would blend in with the sound effects - seemingly emanating from the landscape. We went with the tones.

The all-percussion score sounds like fun, and I look forward to doing it some day, but it is a cliche to have drums accompany "action" and this sound immediately pulled the film back into familiar territory. The sustained tones, however, kept the film unsettled. Skip Lievsay, the sound editor, and I spoke early about these approaches and he sent me some examples of processed sound effects just as I sent him examples of tone compositions, mostly sine and sawtooth waves and singing bowls. When the film is mixed the effect will be that the music comes out of and sinks back into the sound effects in a hopefully subliminal manner.

The end titles of the film raised an interesting question: the entire film takes place without songs or identifiable score, so what could play over five minutes of end titles that wouldn't be self-conscious (like wind or sine waves) or intrusive (like a pop song)? I ended up writing a tune that features the only acoustic instruments in the score, but they take quite a while to appear. The first sounds are percussion but almost sound like sound effects. The next sounds are the sustained tones which are featured in the rest of the score. Only after two minutes of this do truly familiar instruments arrive - guitar and bass - which then play to the end along with the percussion. Hopefully this somehow works with the rest of the film, although we won't really know this until we mix the film, and maybe not until much later.

Film Info

Written, Produced and Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen
Book by Cormac McCarthy

Music Scoring Mixer: Mike Farrow
Performed by Carter Burwell, David Torn, John Pattitucci, Gordon Gottlieb, and Jamie Haddad
Contractor: Sandy Park
Recorded at Clinton Recording
Mixed at The Body Studio

Starring Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, and Woody Harrelson.

U.S. Release 2007

Buy the Book from Amazon

Audio Samples

Here, for demo purposes are some excertps from the score:

For an explanation of the columns above, click here .