The first movie I watched was A Beautiful Mind. My goal was to enjoy the film as I would any other film while it was playing, and then, after it was done, think about what sounds were significant; what I could remember.
Looking back on my experience, I remember many moments of swelling, heart-tugging music. However, I remember an equal number of scenes filled with silence. From what I remember, silence encompassed the scenes where something particularly important was going on — the music started after the moment. But the silences were particularly important, as they allowed the audience to get absorbed by the content of the shot instead of the music. The content made us feel a specific way. And the music, which started seconds after the moment, simply picked us up where we were and carried us along, further emphasizing our feeling. Beautifully done.
The one other thing I remember is the importance of sound near the end of the film, when Nash was hearing voices. The scene that stands out in particular is when he's speaking with his wife and Dr. Rosen. He hears a faint giggle and says, "is that the baby?" It's heartbreaking and touching at the same time.
We, the audience, listen to sound from Nash's point of view, which makes it hard for us to distinguish what's real and what isn't. At the moment mentioned above, we don't know that the baby is with Alicia's mother, and we think, "wow, what a tender moment, he just heard is baby's faint giggle, see, he does pay attention to things that are real and meaningful." Then, we discover that the baby isn't there.
The way the filmmaker used sound to manipulate the way we saw each scene was fantastic, because you don't realize it as it's happening. We think each sound is one everyone can here and only realize later we were listening to what Nash could hear in his subjective reality.
I'm eager to watch at least two other films, see what I think of them without listening too carefully, and then picking the one I want to focus on.
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