As I was watching Let The Right One In one day, I noticed a few things in the sound design of the film that I liked very much. I went back through and listened to the film – instead of watching it – and I found that as much thought seemed to go into the sound design as went into the dialogue or the cinematography.
Tomas Alfredson, the director, wants us to feel very close to Oskar. The film is a story told through Oskar's eyes, and Tomas wants us to see what Oskar sees, feel what Oskar feels, and also to hear what Oskar hears. He and Per Sundström, the supervising sound editor, have crafted a soundscape for this film that grabs the viewer's attention when it needs to, but otherwise provides a solid backdrop of verisimilitude to the images on the screen.
I put together some clips of the relevant portions of the film in order to illustrate the things that I want to talk about. I suggest that headphones be used to listen to the clips, as some of the audio features that I am describing are a bit subtle. Each clip also provides a small view of the accompanying video in order to give context what you are hearing. Also please note that if your web browser has JavaScript disabled, you will may have to click on the "Back" button after you play each clip to come back to the article.
Early on in the film, Oskar is in school, and he irks the bullies by speaking out in class. In the following clip, just after Oskar speaks for the first time, you can hear someone click their tongue in disapproval, and then a sigh of exasperation. As the sigh is tapering off, you can see Conny, who is sitting directly in front of Oskar, tilting his head up a little bit, as though he is rolling his eyes. Then he turns around to give Oskar the look that we will later find out is a promise of torment. Tomas has us hear these things because Oskar too has heard them. At this point Oskar becomes less self-assured, and he seeks a way to escape the attention he has brought upon himself. Then, as the clip finishes, the audio of the policeman speaking fades from the foreground and we can hear Martin, tapping his finger on his desk as he glares at Oskar. The film does this because Oskar's attention has left what the policeman is saying and is focused on the unwanted attention that he is now receiving from Martin.
In the scene where Oskar is stabbing the tree, taking his imagined revenge upon Conny, it is the audio that gives Oskar and us our first hint that his new neighbor is stranger than he could imagine. In the following clip, at first the only sounds you can hear are those of Oskar himself: his voice, his feet in the snow, the knife on the tree. There is no wind, no traffic noise, nothing else. Then at about 13 seconds into the clip you can hear a door open. Oskar is too wrapped up in his fantasy to notice it immediately, and we the audience are perhaps too wrapped up in the images we see to notice what we heard. Soon however, Oskar either senses someone behind him - or perhaps the sound of the door has finally seeped into his consciousness. When he turns, we can now see Eli perched atop the jungle gym. Apparently it was she who came out the door that we heard, and in the 10 seconds before Oskar turns around, she has crossed the snow and gotten on top of the jungle gym without making a single sound.
Then, at the end of Oskar's first encounter with Eli, she turns and walks out of the frame. This time we hear her feet crunching in the snow. Eli apparently walks back to the door, which we hear again, opens it, and goes inside. This door sounds identical to the door that we heard in the previous clip, confirming for us that it was Eli's door that we heard earlier. Also, we can tell by the timing of the door closing that Oskar waits until Eli has gone inside before has the courage to utter his comeback: "Are you so sure that I want to be your friend?" ("Tror du jag vill bli vän med dig, då?")
As I listened to the film, when I came to the scene where Oskar goes out and finds that the cube has been solved, I was not too impressed. It seemed a bit cliched: the solved cube signifies that Oskar now has a friend. He smiles. The sun is shining and birds are chirping. So trite. However, after after thinking about it, I now believe there really is more to it than just that. When Oskar finds the cube, what it means to him is that he has broken out of his isolation, he is actually touching something of the world outside of his miserable existence. That outside world has provided him with a friend, and to him it has become more real and been brought closer him. He now feels like he has a place in it. With this change in his perspective, it makes sense that he could notice things that he ignored before, such as a bird chirping.
In the following clip, we first hear just the sounds made by Oskar himself: the door opening and closing, his feet crunching in the snow, the snow being brushed from the cube. We can even hear a bird chirping, but it is faint and buried beneath the other sounds. Then once Oskar sees that the cube has been solved, he realizes that his world has opened up. Now we can hear the bird clearly. In our ears, as in Oskar's, the world has come closer. Oskar smiles, and the soundtrack of that smile is the chirping of the bird. By putting the sound of the bird very loudly and clearly in the front of the audio, Tomas has put us right next to Oskar in his expanded world.
It was in the scene where Oskar is whipped by the bullies that I first noticed how many interesting things were going on in the audio. As Martin takes the switch the from a sobbing Andreas, you can hear Martin's feet in the snow. You can hear Martin breathing. You can hear Andreas sobbing. Oskar is standing there with his eyes closed, and these are the things he hears. Then you can hear the switch whistling through the air and as it hits, all of the sounds stop. They are replaced by a high-pitched tone, like tinnitus. Tomas and Per have made our ears ring with the blow, just as Oskar's ears must have been ringing.
After the bullies run off, the scene cuts to Oskar eating dinner with his mother. However, while we are still seeing Oskar standing alone in the snow, we hear him telling his mother that he got the cut on his face when he tripped on a rock. (This is called an "L cut" in the film industry, where the audio of a subsequent scene starts before the actual cut to that scene). We know that Oskar is telling his mother a lie, and by having us hear him say it while he is still in the school yard, the film implies that he is beginning to plan his lie then, before he even moves a step.
In the scene where Oskar finally stands up to Conny and he hits him in the ear with the pole, I found that the audio changed my perception of what Oskar was feeling. After the blow, Conny falls to the ice screaming. Oskar stands over Conny, and it is not a straightforward task to interpret the expression on his face. It could be exaltation, or a sort of feral joy of the kill. It could be an adrenalin rush. It could be a bloodlust to match Eli's - that he is wanting to strike again. As we are shown the shot of Oskar's face, the screams start to fade into the background and Johan Söderqvist's wonderful piece Oscar Strikes Back swells to the front of the audio. Then, at a pause in the music, in front of everything else, we hear Oskar give a little exhalation. It is a sigh of release. This gave me the clue that what Oskar is really feeling here is freedom - freedom from the shame, fear and anger that the bullying had been breeding in him. With that one blow, the burden of fear that has characterized his existence has been lifted from him. That one little sound in the audio opened the way for me to understand Oskar in this scene. This feeling of release floods through him, detaching him from his surroundings, and the sound design reflects this.
I was also impressed by the sounds that accompanied Eli's egg. The egg itself was 100% computer generated. Even so, the sounds as Oskar touches it with his finger and it falls to pieces work very well. First, Oskar touches the top of it with his finger - not just touches it but actually presses on it. There is a clicking sound that starts the process of the egg coming apart. Instead of the click coming when Oskar's finger first touches the top of the egg, you see Oskar's finger bend as it apparently applies pressure. Then comes the click. Then as the computer-generated pieces fall, the sounds of tinkling metal begin, quickly crescendo, and then fall off at a rate perfectly timed with what we are shown on the screen. Also, I thought the pitch of these sounds matched perfectly with what you would expect to hear from pieces of metal of that size. Not only did the sounds of the pieces bouncing off of each other sound good, but the sounds of them landing on the box and the table matched perfectly with what your eyes would tell you to expect.
The scene where Eli enters Oskar's apartment uninvited is probably one of those most renowned scenes in the film. Lina's performance is riveting, and the experience of watching something completely new and original being added to the vampire mythos is very engrossing - so much so that its is easy to overlook how much the sounds add to this scene. The thing that first drew my attention to the sounds in this scene was the subtle popping, splashing sound that accompanies the first little spurt of blood from Eli's ear. It sounds exactly right, and it is perfectly timed. Visually, nothing much happens for the first half of the clip, but you can hear Eli's labored breathing and those sounds. Also you can hear a pounding sound that resembles a heartbeat. The sounds build the suspense, and they are so unearthly that you can't wait to see what will happen. Then when Eli starts to bleed, the momentum of the scene picks up and it is easy to get swept past the little popping sound because it fits so well with the visuals.
You can easily imagine Oskar standing there with his "So what's the big deal?" attitude. Then as he notices the intense look on Eli's face, he starts hearing these things: the heavy breathing, the strange sounds. Then perhaps he starts hearing his own heart pounding in his ears as he realizes this situation is on the verge spinning out of control, going far beyond anything that he had imagined could happen. In his growing alarm, his eyes jump wildly around, picking up the details: the blood from her scalp, then from her ear, then from her eyes. As the camera flits around and shows us the details that Oskar sees, it is the sounds that tie the details together to give us a full picture of what is happening to Eli.
Feel free to turn your volume way up for this clip. I cut it right before Oskar shouts, "Nej!", so that it contains no loud sounds. After you have listened to it, turn your sound completely off and watch the clip again with no sound. This illustrates dramatically just how much the audio carries the action of this scene - despite the compelling imagery.
The scenes where Eli attacks are when the sound design really comes to the fore. Although Oskar is only present in one of them, the film's use of sound in the scenes that precede it lays the foundation for putting the audience in Oskar's place when he does finally witness Eli in action. Tomas' approach to the attack scenes is to not show the audience too much, letting us create our own images in our imagination. To ensure that our imaginations are guided along gruesome lines, Tomas and Per used an array of sounds that are simultaneously feral, animalistic, and borderline unnatural. In an interview with the Swedish magazine Filter (Google translation), Per mentions that Eli's feeding sounds are a mixture of sounds (all processed and altered) from a frog, a deer, a camel, and a dog (or at least that's what I can glean from the Google translation).
While I'm not sure that I can pick out which sound comes from which animal, Per also mentions that some of the sounds were made by Elif Ceylan. Apparently she was recorded biting into a sausage, or slurping up a melon. These sounds I think I can recognize. I believe they are present in all of the shots where Eli is feeding, but they are most prominent and recognizable when Eli noms Håkan. In that scene, Johan's spooky score is present but unobtrusive, and other than the sounds of wind and The Machine That Goes Ping, there is nothing else in the soundscape to compete with the sounds of Elif noshing. While they are probably intentionally a bit gross, they also put the audience very close to the action. You can almost feel Eli's teeth piercing Håkan's flesh, or her lips and tongue moving on his neck. The film has no intention of glamorizing or sexualizing Eli's vampirism, and by using these sounds in the foreground of the audio, Tomas is certainly pulling no punches in this regard.
I have put together a montage of clips of Eli's attacks. The sounds in this montage are a bit louder than in the previous clips, so if you have turned your volume way up, you may want to turn it back down. First we are shown the attack on Jocke, and we can see - at a distance - exactly what sort of actions accompany these sounds. Then for the attack on Virginia, we are shown Eli pouncing on her and they both disappear from sight behind the top of the steps. After the shot changes and we are shown Lacke coming up the steps, there is a pan that only slowly brings Eli and Virginia into the frame, but because of the sounds, we already know what we are going to see. Finally, when Eli noms Lacke, we see her land on his back, but then we are shown nothing else of the attack. However, Tomas has already taught us what sort of images accompany the by-now-familiar sounds of Eli nomming. Between those sounds and the easily recognizable sounds of Lacke flailing against the bathtub, we can draw a clear picture in our imaginations of exactly what is going in the bathroom. We can hear what Oskar is hearing and we can see what Oskar is seeing, even though the film doesn't show it to us.
I think that it is important to this story that the audience gets the sense that Eli is opening up to Oskar, and is, in general, truthful with him even though he may not believe the truth that she is telling. In the bed scene, after Eli has clambered into bed behind Oskar, the first thing he does is ask, "How did you get in?" ("Hur kom du in?") Eli answers, "I flew." ("Jag flög.") Oskar doesn't believe this, but we, the audience, do. We believe it because we have heard (and perhaps seen in our imaginations) Eli fly in the shot where she leaves Håkan's hospital window. When Eli leaves the frame, the shot stays on the vacant ledge while we hear sounds that are surely intended to be the flapping of wings - or at least the sound of something passing rapidly and heavily through the air.
While the audio of that scene did not directly relate to using the sound to tell the story from Oskar's point of view, it sets up a later scene where the audio does. In the scene where Oskar's mother comes home and almost catches Eli visiting Oskar, Eli leaves by the window. This is the second time that the film suggests Eli flies. Since Oskar is distracted by stalling his mother, he does not see her fly, and neither do we. However, we do hear her fly, just as Oskar must have heard. We know what those sounds mean because the film has previously presented them prominently in front of the audio and then having Eli tell us explicitly what they mean. When we hear those sounds again at Oskar's window, our imaginations have already been trained to fill in what happened.
In the pool scene, Tomas takes the technique of guiding our imaginations with the sound design a step further. We hear sounds that have had no images associated with them. Further, these sounds are distorted. Oskar is underwater, and to put us underwater with him ,the sounds we hear are muffled and "muddied up." As the clip starts, Oskar is being held under by Jimmy, who plans to cut his face or poke out his eye when (or if) he comes back up. We are waiting for something - anything - to happen to save Oskar. Then we hear the muffled crash, and muffled shouting starts. Or is it screaming? Howling? From what we can hear under the surface we can't tell, but we know that something is going on around the pool. The unidentifiable but dramatic sounds build the suspense as we wait to see something happen. Finally, we see feet pass through the water in front of the camera. They are accompanied by the first clear sounds - those of the feet splashing through the water, and then down the side of the pool. In contrast to the earlier sounds, the splashing can be heard with crystal clarity. Our ears tell us that we are indeed under the water with Oskar. Our attention has been centered on the feet, but once they leave the water, we realize that the muffled howling is still going on. Something is still happening. Then the head splashes into the water, and it comes as a complete surprise. We hear nothing of how it came to part company with the rest of Jimmy, but the splash it makes is heard perfectly. Then there comes a muffled crunching sound and a subdued but clear splash as the severed arm drifts through the frame from top to bottom. We never really know exactly what happened above the surface (although I have my own theory), but then, neither does Oskar. His eyes stay closed the whole time.
Everyone who views this film, even those who do become rabid fans of it, comments on how amazing and memorable the pool scene is. Due to the astute audio design, almost all of the action in this scene takes place in your ears and your imagination, not on the screen.
There are a few other things that I found interesting about the sound design that I want to mention, even though they do not relate directly to Oskar's point of view. One other place where Tomas used an L cut to great effect was near the end of the segment out on the ice. While it doesn't pertain at all to telling the story from Oskar's point of view, it was still an interesting use of audio in the film. A chain saw is used to cut Jocke's corpse from the ice. However, in the shot of the chainsaw actually cutting the ice (taken from a viewpoint within the ice), I think that an average viewer may not immediately recognize what is shown on the screen. I think that for this reason Tomas uses an L cut to bridge from the previous shot to the shot of the chainsaw.
In the previous shot, we see Mr. Avila with the two young girls who have found something. He looks over, recognizes what he sees, and begins to hustle the girls in the opposite direction. As he is doing so, we hear the delicate closing strains of Oscar Strikes Back, and then out of nowhere comes the sound of a chainsaw starting. You can immediately recognize what is making that sound and it seems so out of place that it grabs your attention. Nothing else sounds like that. It causes the audience to wonder what anyone could possibly be doing with a chainsaw at such a time and place. Then the shot switches to the chainsaw cutting the ice. Having already heard and recognized the sound, the audience is now anticipating seeing a chainsaw. Although the image may not be readily recognizable as a chainsaw cutting ice, Tomas has tipped us off about what we will see. In doing so, he managed to avoid having to explain any further the subsequent shot of the crane carrying the block of ice with Jocke's body in it. With the L cut and that seven-second long shot of the chainsaw in the ice, Tomas has told the entire story of the discovery of Jocke's body. I thought this was a very clever and efficient method of storytelling using sound.
Another interesting use of sound was the way the film used the audio to depict Virginia's experience turning into a vampire. After the sun awakens her by burning her finger, Virginia knows that something strange is going on by what she hears, and the film lets us hear those strange sounds as well. She can't identify them, and at first neither can we. The pounding, booming sounds. The indistinct voices. Then as she goes to the window, we hear a sound that is familiar. It sounds like an electric razor. After Virginia has been beaten back by the light, we hear another familiar sound: a vacuum cleaner. Now we begin to realize, as does Virginia, that these sounds are not unusual. It is just unusual that she is able to hear them. After seeing her finger catch fire in the sunlight, and now being shown that her hearing has grown unnaturally acute, we realize that Virginia is changing. In the subsequent shot, where she smells the bloody bandage and we hear the familiar vampire growl, we realize what is happening: Virginia is becoming a vampire. While the sound design furthers the storytelling in many places in this film, in this scene it is indispensable.
Finally, I want to make a comment about the basement scene. I think that viewers who don't speak Swedish have likely missed out on a brilliant choice made by Tomas. In this scene, the song that plays on the tape player is called Försonade. It was written and performed by Agnetha Fältskog before she became a founding member of the pop group ABBA. I became curious about it and I sought out an English translation of the lyrics. I was struck by how perfectly the lyrics fit with what takes place in the basement scene, and also its aftermath. I put together a clip of the scene where the song is played and added English subtitles for the lyrics. Once again, if you have turned your volume up to hear the subtleties of the previous clips, you may want to turn it down for this clip.
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