Misc.

a long analysis of the 1917 OST

a (long) analysis of the 1917 soundtrack

okay i fucking love this movie and this post has been gnawing at the back of my head for so long now.

also uh, spoilers for the movie

keep in mind that Newman wrote some of the music without actually seeing any images, according to an article by Deadline, so anything in this post is either pure coincidence, or my interpretation.

also, there's some bits that don't have a track, or i might have gotten in the wrong order on the list.

My biggest argument in this whole mess of an "analysis" is that the soundtrack follows Scofield's point of view. It makes sense. He's the only central character for the majority of the film so it would give reason as to why the music follows his thought process and mindset. for context, i refer to this mostly as the Scho POV theory.

funny enough, the actual 1917 album isn't in order, but when the songs are put one after the other, we get Blake and Schofield first.

It opens with these really tense chords so automatically we know whatever world the characters are going to be in isn't sunshine and rainbows. This piece comes back later, but the first time the chords play over the Universal card. Then we get, at around 56 seconds into the piece, these solo piano chords. These are important remember those. In my opinion, those chords and more specifically the piano in general represent Blake, and good people in the film, and we'll get into how that is later. Those chords play over our first shot of the two main characters. It's also important to note that Blake is the first character we see, and coupled with the piano chords you're already starting to see that Blake is wanted to be seen as the main character. You could also argue that the tense chords at the beginning, and in much of the entire album represent the war or the state of the world, and those chords go away when we zoom in on the two guys, because they're no anywhere near any form of violence at that moment so there's no need for the chords. This is further backed up with the flute that comes in a little later when we see more of the field and more of the war, kind of. when the boys start descending into the trench,

The next piece, Up the Down Trench , starts right after Erinmore says, "the second devon's are advancing here. how long will it take you to get there? ". Those tense chords start immediately, but I don't think it's representing the war this time because they're already in the thick of it. personally, i think they're supposed to mimic uncertainty. it makes sense in the context too, blake has a brother so it would give him immediate reason for suspicion and schofield didn't know what he was walking into so getting the idea of ​​what's about to happen would give him cause to be wary as well . The beat drops right away following Blake's denial to talk about the situation. There's a sense of urgency, he needs to go now. The music follows them all the way to Leslie, maintaining the tense fever dream like melody to the worst parts of their area. The melody becomes bare and quiet, just like the environment they're in.

We get Gehenna next and on a personal note, this is one of my favorite pieces on the whole album. It's got the same opening as Up the Down trench (kind of), very ambient and lacking of any melody. It's very fitting for two people crossing No Man's Land. There's just nothing, so there's nothing discernable in the melody. This next bit is purely my own interpretation, but Newman wrote in these percussive hits every now and again in the first half of the song, and to me they sound like bombs falling, or like the echo of bombs falling, reminding people how the environment got to be like this. At about a minute and twenty seconds, a solo piano begins to play a new melody. Remember, so far the only actual melody we've gotten is Blake's theme. For the longest time, I was convinced that Gehenna had some sort of form of the Dies Irae. After doing some digging, it's not the same at all, which throws out like half of my dissertation. However, I will adamantly argue that this melody represents death or danger. It always shows up when there's danger and only plays when the characters realize what they've gotten themselves into. The piece builds and builds as they get closer to the German front line, playing our death line over and over and over, but then abruptly stops when they actually arrive because Erinmore was right, the Germans have actually gone.