The Sound Design of "Killing Them Softly"

Andrew Dominik:

The sequence has no music, just dialogue and sound effects. “What I prefer to do in films is not to use music as underscore,” he said. “If you’re dealing with movies that have a lot of ambivalence about them, music can take away so many layers of a thing.” Instead he uses sound to stir emotions that music often provokes.

I have a lot of respect for directors who make these choices with scenes of this caliber. Not every scene needs to be enhanced using music. Sometimes you just need a good sound team and clever tricks like “the sound of flash bulbs, which provide a kind of tingly aftereffect” to pull the emotion out of the audience.