Sound Space of M.Garrone’s Films: from Fiction to Reality

Abstract

Modern cinema has a huge number of expressive means that allows to represent a diegetic space in a certain kind of artistic convention. One of such means is the attempt to create audiovisual relations that ensure the reliability of the filmic action. Italian film director Matteo Garrone in his works explores the possibilities of the soundtrack to form an audiovisual space that would be organic to the chosen type of the artistic convention. Working with different genres of conditionality, M.Garrone nevertheless remains an adept of realistic style. It is particularly interesting to note that Garrone’s realism is manifested in his films by the means of using plausible sound, regardless of whether the documented outskirts of dirty Naples or the embodied images of an ancient fairy tales are shown on the screen. We can define such an attitude to sound treatment as audiovisual plausibility – a strong correlation between imagetrack and soundtrack in every nuance of their alterations. The soundscape of M.Garrone’s films plays a fundamental role in the formation of his  ealistic director style. In this article, the soundtracks of three films by the Italian director (“Gomorra”, “Reality” and “Pinocchio”) are examined from the point of view of the choice of audio-visual artistic means, which allow him to physically materialize diegetic space. Sound gives «corporeality» to both pseudo-documentary and fantastic type of narration.