Though directors are often given sole credit for a movie’s soundtrack, many people help bring music to the big screen. (We're excluding musicals from both lists, as they feel like a different category entirely.) These are usually multi-artist compilation albums, and almost always include songs with vocals and lyrics. Stay tuned for the best original scores list later in the week. Today, we discuss soundtracks, which we’re defining as collections of songs that have been used in films. In looking at the greatest movie music of all time, Pitchfork is publishing two separate lists this week: best soundtracks and best original scores. When sound and vision meet, transcendence ensues. It’s impossible to do. Throughout film history, songs have added glory to struggle, majesty to landscapes, depth to heroes and villains alike. Or Super Fly without Curtis Mayfield’s haunted croon. Or Pulp Fiction without Dick Dale’s cataclysmic surf-rock guitar. At their worst, these showy passages with twinkling pianos and harps are an obvious bid for a Terrence Malick comparison, as if raising the ante on the "Song by Song" maestro by excising the whole world population in the final cut instead of just the main cast members.What would the movies be without music? Imagine Do the Right Thing without Radio Raheem’s blaring boombox. At its best, these scenes proclaim talent with their ghostly, empty settings and lovingly-framed cinematography by Joe Lindsay, as gliding cameras, whimsical voiceovers, and light pacing create a gorgeous atmosphere where you insert yourself into the story, wondering what you'd do-and want to believe-in this situation. Halfway through, "Bokeh" pulls back on narrative and pushes visual poetry, revealing its ambitions. That statement is always true for the characters as they clash and come to terms with the world (and it's a good reminder for the lovers in the audience as well). "We aren't looking at the same thing," she despairs. She, however, as a pragmatist with a previous background in religion, sees it as an insulting symbol of where they are now. He, an optimistic photographer who loves his old camera and the ugly images it can create, thinks it looks cool. But it all comes to a head when Riley takes Jenai (who constantly checks her email inbox, missing her family) to see the abandoned corpse of a crashed plane from decades ago. Sometimes they're on the same page, as when they go shopping during a giddy montage or find romance outside in places that would normally swarm with tourists. Instead, writer/directors Geoffrey Orthwein and Andrew Sullivan keep the story interesting by making it about their differing ideologies during such phenomena, creating thoughtful characters who see the world as either half-empty or half-full. "Bokeh" refers to the aesthetic quality of blurriness in photos, so no anxiety is necessary (like I initially had) about some supernatural force or Icelandic monster third-wheeling this apocalyptic situation. In some rough line-reading, they exclaim the gist of "What's happening?!" or "There's got to be someone here," but after Jenai can't make contact with her mom back in America, it becomes apparent-for some reason, whether it's the rapture or something else, they are alone in the world. Their first morning, they wake up, the streets are dead quiet, and everyone in the land is gone. Jenai (Monroe) and Riley (O'Leary) are in Reykjavik, on their first vacation overseas. There's sturdy chemistry between rising actors Maika Monroe (" It Follows") and Matt O'Leary (" The Lone Ranger") as they enact this nightmare, but this is more than a relationship movie.
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