There are other examples of films where the screenplay and the soundtrack are the products of one creator, starting with Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times and City Lights, but it's relatively rare for the writer of a film to compose the score. When that is the case, as with Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, who wrote the music for the Australian western The Proposition (2005), for which Cave wrote the screenplay, the result is a high degree of dramatic and musical unity. Both the film and the score are lean, dirty, dark, and evocative. For the most part, the soundtrack foregoes the use of the human voice, with dabs of acoustic guitar, piano, violin, and percussion barely filling the spare textures. Though little of this music could stand alone, except for the final track, it is tremendously effective in context, adding layers of emotional and psychological meaning to the action of the movie. On the strength of this collaboration, Cave and Ellis (both previously better known for their work in the band, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds), were hired to write the music for the 2007 American western The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. While their music for that film is likewise effective, the aesthetic unity of the score and film they created together is truly amazing.
© TiVo