Welcome to The Queue — your daily distraction of curated video content sourced from across the web. Today, we’re watching a breakdown of what expressionistic sound design sounds like in Matt Reeves’ ‘The Batman.’
When film fans think of “expressionism,” a very specific visual style immediately comes to mind. We’re talking stark lighting, long shadows, jagged mise-en-scène, and absurd angles. This is, of course, a very specific flavor of expressionism: German Expressionism, to be exact. The pre-war cinematic movement is primarily identified by its striking visuals: from the psychologically troubling doubling of 1913’s The Student of Prague to warped gravity and jutting, distorted rooftops of Fritz Lang’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920).
Bred out of Germany’s relative creative isolation in the lead-up to World War I, German Expressionism is a specific instance of a larger movement that plays fast and loose with a broad artistic idea: to externally manifest internal psychological states. While expressionism’s definition isn’t explicitly confined to visuals, mutated skylines and theatrical lighting are often what we talk about when we identify the cinematic movement in the wild. Even when speaking about German Expressionism’s progeny (for instance, the films of Alfred Hitchcock, Brian DePalma, and Tim Burton), we tend to do so in visual terms.
The video essay below is a good reminder that sound design can also be a tool of expressionistic filmmaking. Using 2022’s The Batman as an example, the essayist unpacks how the sound design and sound mix model the film’s soundscapes around the subjective experience of the characters. After all, when you are intently focusing on something, doesn’t the ticking clock fade into the background? Does the success (or failure) of a date night have any effect on how the sound of rain feels to you?
Headphones are encouraged, and beware light visual spoilers for The Batman.
Watch “Why ‘The Batman’ Sounds Incredible”:
Who made this?
This video essay on the expressionistic sound design in Matt Reeves’ The Batman is by Virginia-based filmmaker and video editor Thomas Flight. He runs a YouTube channel under the same name. You can follow Thomas Flight and check out his back catalog of video essays on YouTube here. You can follow him on Twitter here.
More videos like this
- Keenly related to the video essay above, here’s Thomas Flight again on how HBO’s Euphoria draws from German Expressionism.
- Want to see more of Thomas Flight’s work? Can’t say we blame you. Here’s a look at the social media-specific format and structure of Bo Burnham’s comedy special Inside.
- And here’s Flight on the intricate visual details of Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch, which should have scored a visual effects Oscar nomination but that’s neither here nor there.
- And here’s another sample of Flight’s work, on the gentle editing of Kelly Reichardt‘s First Cow.
- Finally, here’s Flight again, with a look at the real-fake lighting in Pixar’s Soul.
Related Topics: sound design, The Batman, The Queue
