11. Popol VuhAguirre
Working with Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski at that time must have been a mind-bending experience. We’d referenced Aguirre, The Wrath Of God a lot in our soundtrack for The Fountain, because it’s got this hypnotic natural psychedelic "plant ingestion" feel about it. You feel that you’re in another world. You might be a modern man, but you are completely useless in this environment. The music constantly reminds you of this. A Field In England has that feel as well, a psychedelic, hypnotic vibe that transports you. You’re seduced into the world that the filmmaker’s creating. I love that, because so many times music in a film can be an emotional handrail. It can easily snap you out of the experience of the film. That’s why horror films are next to useless these days. All they do is have loud blares coming at you, to make you jump. Things that are more insidious and unsettling have far more power.
A film like The Conjuring, for instance, the first half of that film was deeply unsettling. It didn’t rely on horror movie jumps and scares, it just unsettled you. The second half of the film went to a more traditional area, which I must admit I was glad of because had it continued in the same vein it would have seriously freaked me out. I love being unsettled, and films can be very disturbing without having to be horror films. In …The Wrath Of God the music doesn’t sound indigenous to where the people are, but Popol Vuh really nailed the feeling of not feeling quite right in this part of the world. That’s a fantastic achievement.
