Essentially the most impactful moments in “No Different Selection” — those which can be the bleakest, grossest, and most darkly humorous abruptly — work not due to something that director Park Chan-wook reveals us. They work due to how viscerally the extreme, emotionally-driven sound design makes us really feel them. The sound is the place the violence lives, and the place director Park actually will get to have enjoyable.
Whether or not it’s the latent aggression and terrifying lust for management that Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) places into shaping bonsai timber or the bodily horror of consuming a whiskey-bomb, the sound in “No Different Selection” at all times hooks the viewers into how messy, ragged, and determined is Man-su’s post-layoff quest to assassinate anybody he would possibly compete with for the uncommon and vanishing paper firm job he feels will give his life which means.
“In comparison with the picture, I feel sound is a much less explored space in trendy cinema. There’s a lot extra to find right this moment,” Director Park stated on an upcoming episode of the Filmmaker Toolkit Podcast.
It’s significantly massive, bodily sounds that betray Man-su’s willingness to kill for his empty bourgeois dream — the concept he has, look ahead to it, no different selection. However the work of designing these moments isn’t nearly eager about sound results themselves or adjusting the amount of the combination. A number of the most placing, inconceivable photographs in “No Different Selection” arose out of Park deciding how finest to intensify the sound design. “There have been circumstances during which the picture would observe the sound, and the sound could be the driving force of the film. That’s how vital sound was to me for this film,” Park stated.
An ideal instance is the scene the place Man-su is lastly able to off paper exec and generally influencer Solar-chul (Park Hee-soon) and talks his method into what seems to be Solar-chul’s man-cave cabin of disappointment. The binge whiskey consuming that follows — a minimum of on Solar-chul’s half, Man-su is making an attempt to remain sober sufficient for homicide — is chaotic sufficient, however then when Man-su can’t discuss his method out of downing what American faculty college students used to name an Irish Automobile Bomb, the view shifts to the within of the glass. We hear Man-su take the shot from the angle of the shot, and the explanation for that’s all about sound.
“The digicam is glued to the glass and strikes with the glass, so there’s distinctive rigging for that. However it all actually goes again to sound. Earlier than Mansu gulps the drink down and it stays in his mouth, as a result of he doesn’t need to drink it, we hear that,” Park stated. “Then ultimately, he has no different selection however to gulp it down and the sound of that drink gushing down his throat and the whiskey glass falling and hitting his mouth as he drinks, then hitting the underside of the [beer] glass, I wished all these sounds to really feel as if the viewers is listening proper in entrance of Man-su or maybe contained in the glass.”
Being that near a personality, sonically, leaves the character completely no area to cover their worst impulses and needs. “Man-su has been avoiding alcohol, however when he was consuming, he was a extra violent man. So after we witness him committing these atrocious murders like this, it doesn’t come from nowhere. There was at all times that sleeping beast within him, which acts because the background for his violent acts. That’s why this scene was essential, and that’s why I put loads of work into constructing it as a result of this was the second when the beast that has been inside has been launched,” Park stated.
One of the vital memorable methods we perceive the beast clawing at its cage, because it had been, is available in Man-su’s obsessive gardening and greenhouse upkeep at his beloved, and now imperilled house. Park and his workforce amplify the sounds of pruning and shaping a bonsai tree in order that they really feel, to us, just like the snapping of decidedly extra human limbs. Initially, the bonsai was simply going to be decor, however Park determined that because it was there, they could as effectively use it cinematically, too.
“The act of bending a department and designing a tree the way in which that [Man-su] needs it reveals each side of his character. In his bonsai work, he virtually feels as if he’s creating his personal universe, and we see that mirrored in the way in which he treats his household as effectively. Identical to his bonsai, he places all of his care into it, however on the identical time, we might see him attempt to artificially implement the form that he needs the household to be in,” Park stated.
It’s the virtually moist, too-loud bending and breaking of branches that educate us the best way to really feel about Man-su’s want to implement the construction he needs on the world, and everybody in it. Park and his workforce let sound lead us to the ethical place Man-su himself is incapable of going. He’s stopped up his ears.
“Sound by itself may help the narrative. It might probably additionally make up part of the narrative. So it may be used as this artful device to subconsciously affect the viewers,” Park stated. “A director must suppose comprehensively about sound. We have now to consider dialogue and sound results and the whole lot the viewers hears as one factor, and so, similar to a composer who’s writing a symphony, we’re writing music notes for every instrument, however we’re eager about every part inside a bigger image. You need to alter all of that for one massive sound.”
