Film composer Volker Bertelmann took an abstract and minimalist approach to the score of the nine-time Oscar nominated film from Germany, All Quiet on the Western Front. Instead of creating the kind of sweeping sound you might expect in a war epic, Bertelmann chose to create an atmosphere of discomfort that makes it impossible for the viewer to rest, even for a second, while viewing the film.
It’s one of the most avant-garde scores of this or any other year. In our conversation, Bertelmann and I discuss how he came up with the idea to create dissonant sounds to reflect the horror of war. In doing so, he has produced one of the most memorable scores in recent film history.
Awards Daily: I think one of the hardest things to do in cinema is to make an anti-war war film. The nature of combat lends itself to action, which of course creates adrenaline in people as they’re watching it. All Quiet is unusually successful—the most successful I can think of since maybe Platoon—at being a great anti-war war film. And a big part of it I think is your score, so can you tell me how you came to this sound for the film?
Volker Bertelmann: I was watching the movie very late in production, when it was already pretty much all cut, and that is not always the case. Sometimes you start scoring with a first script or even when you are just looking at ideas. But in this case, I see that looking backwards was an advantage—that I was watching it when it was already pretty much in good shape—because I could already hear the whole soundscape of the film.
The very first thing that I saw that just stayed with me was this first ten-minute sequence about how the uniforms are getting washed. It shows the war machine, in a way, as a factory. It dehumanizes human beings as material. And so I had the feeling that this needs a sound that is very raw, and that it needs something that is a little bit like a horn or a signal. And I was thinking in the beginning maybe it’s brass, but then brass felt to me, well, it felt maybe a little dated.
So, I went back home after the screening and I had a few instructions from the director (Edward Berger), which were only a few sentences, but those helped me find my own concept as well. It was not a situation where the director said, hey, I want to have this sound and this piece, and where the temp music was very explicit. No—it was actually very empty for me to start. And, on my way back home from the screening, I actually thought about the harmonium that belonged to my great-grandmother, which was in my studio for about a year, that I refurbished.
And I had the feeling that it might be a good instrument for this, because the inside of a harmonium is a little bit like a machine. It works with air, and you have to pump the paddles, and you have wooden elements that are in movement. So there’s a lot of mechanical noise that you can record. In the first track—it’s called “Remains”—those three notes are the harmonium being distorted with an amplifier. And on top of that, you hear these little elements of the paddles and the wooden parts that are doing this pumping. And then in this scene the machinery starts to roll and the sewing machines are entering from the sound department and they build up the tempo and the pace.
Suddenly, you have this whole sequence of a kind of industrialization of war in a way that is very connected with human lives. In a way, I think that begins to answer your question. Along with the industrial, we get the question of the sense of the life of these boys. I mean, 17 year olds, freely going to war—I mean, when, when I was 17, I had no idea about where my life would go, but I just, I wouldn’t be able to say, “yes, of course, I will go to France and go to the front.” I would never do that. I would be completely not ready for that, and I mean, you never are ready to go into war—but these were kids, so it needed music that was written for their loss of their youth, of their loves, of everything that they could have experienced, but didn’t, because they made a stupid decision.
Awards Daily: We’re talking about those three ominous notes. What I found interesting about their usage, is that I couldn’t establish a pattern in this score. And what I mean by that is usually when you’re watching a film, typically the score weaves in and out, and it creates a certain level of subconscious comfort for you. This does the opposite of that.
Volker Bertelmann: Yeah, totally. That is the use of no grid. When you have something very quantized and very perfect, which is a fantastic thing, you hear pieces that are all together and groovy and it all works together. At the same time, when you are off grid, suddenly this destabilization starts to take place and you don’t know when it’s coming. It’s actually like you’re conditioning the listener or the watcher in a way with those signals. You’re conditioning them by this first signal, and the second one is coming, then you know, okay, there are two.
There might be a third one, and then at some point there’s the third one, and then you are on a hook, for the whole time, because every time this sound appears, you wait for the next one. But if you stretch the timing, it starts to feel random and suddenly you realize that it’s a part of the whole soundscape and not only a composed element. And there was not at all an alternative for me to write a long melody line.
I was raised in a country where my parents were born before the second World War. So in a way I was raised in a country that has no consciousness for heroes, for me at least. When I think about the war, I just think about shame and guilt and about all the things that were happening. When working on a film like this, you don’t want to create music for a hero. I don’t wanna create any overt pathos. In America and in England that’s of course a different point of view about the wars, and I totally understand that. That’s a different perspective that is totally deserved,
Awards Daily: You had mentioned this industrial aspect of the sound, and that was actually a thought that I had when I was listening to it—that this reminds me of some of the industrial music that I listened to in the late eighties and nineties. Was there inspiration taken from the music of that era?
Volker Bertelmann: Yes. I grew up with Einstürzende Neubauten and a lot of punk bands. Sometimes I was even thinking about Fritz Lang movies. Movies that had a lot of conceptual ideas within a very, let’s say repetitive pattern of music. There’s also a lot of classical music inspiration—I would say Schoenberg is a very good example where you have the 12-tone music, where suddenly there is something in the music that feels claustrophobic and is not pleasant, which I think is sometimes very necessary.
In order to enjoy the moments where suddenly the sky opens up and you see light and you’re suddenly relieved from the tension, you have to have darkness. No relief can work when you don’t know what the darkness is. You have to go through the mud in a way to actually feel the music in a sense that it’s maybe a religious piece that will relieve you from all the pain. So, it needs both sides. And it can actually be very difficult to find both sides, because you have to fulfill certain aspects for the project and not only your own artistic approach.
Awards Daily: My editor and I were talking yesterday in advance of this interview, and he told me that for the first thirty minutes he kept having to fight the desire to mute the film because the score made him so uncomfortable. And that seems to be the point of the score to a large degree is to create discomfort. Is that a strange feeling for you as a composer to intentionally insert discomfort into the score?
Volker Bertelmann: Well, I come from an area in the Rhineland, in Germany where music sometimes, when being played to an audience, it’s a good sign when the audience leaves the room. [Laughs.] That’s a sign of success. I am not a big fan of this because, personally, I think music needs both sides. But at the same time, it needs a moment where you actually make a statement, and statements are not always comfortable. Statements can be very embracing but they can also be uncomfortable. I’m a person that has stage dived in my life so many times. I love the physical aspect of music just as well as sitting in a concert hall and listening to a Bach piece or to a Scriabin piece.
I need both. I can’t have music only for my head all the time that I can’t feel physically. I think that is very important for a film to get that uncomfortable but also gritty and dark and weird sound. For example, when hearing a sound like those three notes, if they’re not hitting you directly, you’re losing the whole thing. There’s also the risk that when you send this three note motif to a director, they might say—Hey, the sound is fantastic, but could you write some music with it? And you’re like, man, no, that’s it. That’s the music. [Laughs.] And then they might say, uh oh, uh, really? And then you’re like, yes, it’s because this actually is the signal. What I really loved with Edward and me is that we share a lot of passion about art and, particularly, about abstract pictures. I think you can be musically inspired by painters, photographers, and sculptures.
You can learn a lot about the abstract—the combination of form but also losing the form and bringing in certain elements and textures that help to enhance the surface of something. But you are not being explicit in the form at all, because that means you suddenly are already in a cliched area. That actually tells you that this is what I mean. I don’t mean more. Just this.
Awards Daily: I like to think there are two kinds of film scores: the kind that you notice and the kind that you kind of don’t notice. The kind that you don’t notice just blends right into the film. Mostly what you have here is the kind that you do notice. Although, watching the film a second time, I did hear other things too, like some piano and softer things, even though those were still uncomfortable somehow. I think those three notes get a lot of focus, but there is a lot more score here, including those awkward drum beats that you will throw in every now and then. It’s still fairly simple, but it’s very expressive. I take it that minimalism was kind of a motif for this soundtrack.
Volker Bertelmann: Absolutely. I would say it’s a combination of minimalism, rawness, and abstraction. The snare drums took me the longest in the whole score. There was one sentence that Edward said to me—I need some snares that are played by a drummer that can’t play the snare. That was his sentence that he gave me. And I said, oh, uh, well, we normally work with snare drum players that can play a snare, and to tell them to play something that is not working…it’s actually very difficult. [Laughs.] So I had to come up with an idea. When I work with a prepared piano, which is my instrument as Hauschka when I’m performing, I will work with other keys, or I’m muting certain keys just to be dysfunctional in a way.
A lot of times that is leading me in a direction which I describe sometimes as the door of your building when you walk out of your apartment and the main door is blocked. After years of living in this apartment, the back door is suddenly the only way to get out. Suddenly you realize that in the back street there’s the best café, or coffee place that you never experienced because you always walked out of the main door. That was your morning walk. That’s what I think is important in the creative process. You have to challenge yourself and you have to build barriers in your habits so that you have to walk around them.
Awards Daily: The only recent score I could think of that was even slightly similar to yours, or at least evoked the same sort of feelings was, of all things, Michael Giacchino’s score for The Batman. Am I crazy to say that?
Volker Bertelmann: Oh no, not at all. I mean, the approach of the superhero movie is definitely different. But I would say that his approach to Batman was to have the courage to create something that is actually enhancing the atmosphere of the film. I would say all the good Batman films are focusing on creating a claustrophobic atmosphere that actually keeps the tension all the way through. And you nearly can’t breathe because a small fire is burning during the whole film in a way. I think with music it’s the same. The difficulty is in the starting point, and how you can stretch that over the length of the film and make it work. I would say in my case, I was using the element of the three notes in all cues, in variations, until the end where they change into something very beautiful. And then they’re back into the war machines. I think you’re totally right. I think there’s definitely a similarity.
Awards Daily: Lastly, are you surprised at the level of response and acclaim that the film has garnered in America from the Academy? Nine Oscar nominations, including one for your score, is pretty unusual for a film not in the English language.
Volker Bertelmann: Yes. [Laughs.] I mean, absolutely. I’m extremely happy about that. It’s not only because it’s America and England where we are always looking at as artists growing up. That’s where all the big bands and the great music was coming from—besides techno, I would say. [Laughs.] There is a lot of music coming from America that we always looked up to, along with the great films that were always coming from there. But specifically with a significant topic like this the response is very meaningful for us because, at least for me, it’s a kind of statement of vulnerability to the outside.
I think to be accepted and embraced, and people are saying—Hey, I think this topic is so important and it’s wonderful that you are bringing it from your point of view into the world, which also I think is, because the film is maybe not really commenting. Everybody can find their own thing in it. Even if you say, I don’t like the film, or I don’t like the music, or whatever, that’s totally fine. You are not doing films for everyone or music for everyone. It’s not like lukewarm water.
All Quiet on the Western Front is streaming now on Netflix
