Sound in Movies: A Different Kind of Seeing

 

I saw the movie "Tuner" today, and one of the features of the film was the use of sound at certain times when the drama focussed around the Leo Woodall character in  his safe-cracking, and in other action moments.  We were hearing the action from the sounds in his head. This was interesting, and I recalled the role of sound in 'Rose of Nevada', which I reflected on recently. In that film,  oddly distant dialogue, the slightly unreal soundscape placed  a layer of distance between the viewer and the action. Use of sound in ‘Tuner’ was different.

In ‘Tuner’ the sound design functions as a form of subjective immersion. When the drama centres on Niki White’s ( Leo Woodall ) safe-cracking, or on moments of heightened concentration and danger, we are drawn into his  sensory world. External reality recedes and we hear what he hears and what his mind attends to. Small sounds become magnified, irrelevant sounds disappear; rhythms and mechanical noises acquire an almost musical significance.  

Rose of Nevada had the reverse effect.  I guess one way of putting this is that ‘Tuner’ uses sound to move us closer to experience, while Rose of Nevada uses sound to move us further away from it.

But in  both cases at least, we are reminded that sound is as important to any film, and  cinema is more than  a visual art. The eye tells us what is happening, but the ear helps us  to inhabit what is happening.

In Rose of Nevada, the unusual soundscape contributes to the feeling that the events are being recollected, half-remembered, or viewed through a veil of memory and myth. The distant dialogue and unreal acoustic space make us feel that we are  never entirely "there."

In ‘Tuner’, by contrast, sound compresses the distance between audience and character. Every click, scrape, and metallic resonance becomes charged with significance because we are experiencing events from within Niki White’s concentration.

So, in  both movies, sound is controlling our psychological distance. We should look out for the next award season: both movies will surely be listed for Best Sound?

Great Tew: Wall Paintings and a Priest's Apology

I took these photographs of the wall paintings at St Michael and All Angels, Great Tew. They belong, I understand, to one of the most important surviving groups of early 14th‑century wall paintings in Oxfordshire. They form part of a larger narrative cycle running along the south aisle wall, and the image shown here is one of the panels that fits neatly between the aisle windows. It depicts scenes from the Passion cycle.

At the right-hand end of what is effectively the lowest tier is the Appearance to Mary Magdalene — one of the clearest surviving images. Two small trees frame the scene, and Mary, on the right, kneels reverently before Christ, who holds the banner of the Resurrection.

Noli Me Tangere - Appearance to Mary Magdalene

There is a certain irony in the fact that the central image of the Resurrection has been largely lost beneath a later memorial tablet. When such monuments were installed, the existence of medieval wall paintings — often whitewashed after the Reformation or simply forgotten — was probably not suspected. And so this central and crucial image is now reduced to Christ’s foot stepping out of the tomb and a handful of tiny soldiers, one of whom, on the right, is seen leaning on his shield.

The Resurrection 

The memorial is to the Reverend Charles Dayman, M.A., who served as the Vicar of Great Tew from 1830 until his death in August 1844. His tenure spanned a transformative and highly turbulent era for both the local parish and the wider Church of England.

Before arriving in Oxfordshire, Dayman was educated at Exeter College, Oxford. He initially found clerical work as a curate at St. James’s Church in Dover, Kent, where he lived with his wife. 

He was formally instituted as the Perpetual Vicar of St Michael and all Angels in 1830. Dayman ran the parish at a time when religious nonconformity was surging in rural Oxfordshire. By 1834, just a few years into his tenure, Great Tew was reporting a massive spike in residents identifying as Baptists or "Ranters" (Primitive Methodists). 

Dayman spent much of his energy trying to retain his congregation against the draw of local cottage meetings. He took an active role in running the local school and his strict, structured educational regime was highly regarded by the regional gentry, who sent their children to Great Tew specifically to be tutored under his leadership.

Dayman’s family was profoundly impacted by the Oxford Movement.

I thought I might imagine how the Rev. Dayman might look on his own memorial today:

An Apology from the South Aisle 

Forgive me, Lord, for where my marble lies,
Blotting the ancient pigments of Your grace.
My passing breath they sought to solemnise.
With heavy hand, and blind to any trace,
The parish carved my name in polished stone,
Right where the medieval masters drew
The rising Christ, who broke the tomb alone,
To bring the dying world a life anew.
Yet here I stand, imposter before the grave,
My cold memorial blocking out the light,
A mortal man entombing Him who saves,
And hiding resurrection from our sight.
Dear Saviour, scratch away my proud decree;
Let Dayman fade, that we might look on Thee.

These survivals remind us how precarious medieval art can be. Parish churches were living buildings, altered and adapted to the needs of each generation. What remains is accidental and all the more precious for it. At Great Tew, the faint red lines still carry the energy of the original hand, working I imagine, from familiar models and with a sure sense of narrative and gesture.

For those who want to explore the cycle in more detail, an excellent and comprehensive review is available here , with fine, clear images of each section  

Into the Forest, Towards Oblivion: Edward Thomas and D. H. Lawrence

 Here I look at two 20^th century poems about death and dying.   Each deals with the subject  through images drawn from the natural world or from everyday experience. The poems are  are Edward Thomas's Lights Out and D. H. Lawrence's The Ship of Death. Both poems contemplate the end of life with unusual honesty, yet they arrive at very different visions of what awaits us. I explore the contrast.

The poems are here [ Valid June 15th 2026: Open in new tab]: The Ship of Death  and  Lights Out

Edward Thomas's Lights Out and D. H. Lawrence's The Ship of Death are poems that confront mortality without sentimentality. Neither turns away from the fact of death. But these poems express two very different visions of what it means to approach the end of life.

In Lights Out, Thomas guides the traveller to the edge of an "unfathomable" forest. Roads and tracks lead towards it, but at the brink they lose their certainty:

Many a road and track
That, since the dawn's first crack,
Up to the forest brink,
Deceived the travellers,
Suddenly now blurs,
And in they sink.

The roads of life appear to promise destinations and purposes. Yet at the forest's edge these distinctions dissolve. The traveller enters a realm beyond ordinary understanding.

Crucially, Thomas never tells us what lies within the wood. The mystery remains intact. The forest is 'unfathomable' because it resists explanation. Yet the poem is not troubled by this ignorance. On the contrary, its serenity arises from accepting it. The speaker declares, 'I desire to go.'There is no struggle against the darkness. The forest is entered willingly. The poem's power lies in its trust that not everything needs to be known. Death is imagined as a mystery into which one passes.

Lawrence's poem begins from a very different premise. Here death is not a mystery, but a destination repeatedly named. That destination is oblivion.

Build then the ship of death, for you must take
the longest journey, to oblivion.

The word appears more than once and stands at the centre of the poem's vision. Unlike Thomas's forest, oblivion is not unfathomable. Its meaning is stark. It suggests the extinction of consciousness, the erasure of identity, the end of striving and memory.  

Yet the drama of Lawrence's poem does not lie solely in its destination. It lies in the possibility that the destination is not always  finally reached. The poem's most striking moment comes with a sudden reversal:

Ah wait, wait, for there is the dawn,
the cruel dawn of coming back to life...

The adjective 'cruel' transforms the poem. The return to life is not welcomed. It is endured. The voyager approaches oblivion, only to be drawn once more into existence. Death itself is no longer the primary challenge. The challenge is recurrence. The voyage is undertaken, interrupted, and perhaps undertaken again.

This difference separates Lawrence fundamentally from Thomas. Thomas imagines a mystery entered into. For  Lawrence the destination has a finality, but it is the journey which carries the uncertainty.

Even the famous image of the 'little ship, with oars and food and little dishes' acquires a different significance in this light. At first these details seem reassuringly domestic. They bring the language of the comfort of ordinary life into a poem about death. Yet they do not soften the destination. Rather, they express sympathy for the traveller. The little provisions are not evidence that the journey is easy. They are evidence that it is difficult. The tenderness lies not in confidence about what awaits but in care for the one who must undertake the voyage.

Meantime, Lawrence's allusions to Shakespeare's Hamlet are particularly revealing. Hamlet imagines death as ‘the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns.’ Lawrence presents a more unsettling possibility. His poem expresses the  anxiety is that the traveller may return before the voyage has finally achieved its destination. The repeated references to oblivion suggest that extinction remains the goal towards which the journey moves, yet the 'cruel dawn of coming back to life' introduces that possibility of interruption and recurrence.

The Hamlet echoes deepen the poem's darkness. Shakespeare's prince contemplates the possibility of ending life with a ‘bare bodkin’  yet hesitates at the uncertainty of what may follow death. Lawrence inherits something of that sombre atmosphere. The question is no longer whether death should be chosen; death is inevitable. The question is how one prepares for its arrival.

The result is a poem that possesses a stoic rather than a consoling wisdom. Lawrence does not ask us to trust a mystery. He does not promise that oblivion is benign. Instead he insists that the voyage awaits us and that preparation is necessary. This is where the contrast with Thomas is sharpest. Thomas finds peace in mystery. Lawrence finds dignity in necessity. The traveller in Lights Out walks willingly into the wood. The voyager in The Ship of Death builds his vessel because he must.