Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, 2013)

[Zot!]

If it's supposed to be true to how it would sound in space it would be completely quiet, no?

Maybe the sound effects are gone too. However, the dialogue would all still be there because it's all relayed through the comms systems, even in the silence of space. But I don't know, and I'm not double-dripping, just to eliminate a score I actually really like.

Where's Neil deGrasse Tyson when you need him?

Sound effects should still be present in the oxygenated environments of the space stations.

The whole thing is something of a compromise, as the soundtrack includes non-diagetic music, radio transmissions, as well as sounds from inside the spacesuit, which should always be heard by Sandra Bullock, but not us.

Spoiler

not to mention a fucking ghost

[solaris72]

The whole thing is something of a compromise, as the soundtrack includes non-diagetic music, radio transmissions, as well as sounds from inside the spacesuit, which should always be heard by Sandra Bullock, but not us.

A compromise of what? Is there some rule that the "microphone" (a hypothetical abstraction in this case of course) always has to be where the camera is? Opening scene of Cries and Whispers as I recall, the sounds of the woman's body are heard as if the microphone was right in bed with her, while the camera is further away. Plenty of movies cut to outside of a car while maintaining a conversation from within the car on the soundtrack. Space movies inevitably have to take liberties, but I also feel they're in some cases held to a standard of nitpicking that other movies don't face.

Spoiler

And it's not a ghost, she's passed out and dreaming.

The reboot of Battlestar Galactica treated sound in space in an interesting way- there was sound in such scenes, but it was limited and muted, the governing principle being that the only sounds that would be heard would be sounds that microphones placed somewhere in the scene (conducting sound from a ship's hull, picking up sound inside a cockpit, etc) could theoretically pick up.

[hearthesilence]

Cuarón discussed this film in a masterclass at Locarno.

Surprisingly, Children of Men actually derailed his career - it didn't gross its budget, which made studios reluctant to finance his proposals. He developed a road movie afterwards that fell apart when he failed to get financing. Broke and dealing with problems in his personal life, he needed to work and make some serious movie so he consciously came up with something commercial: this movie. Warner bought it, but he couldn't get a big budget, and consulting with David Fincher and James Cameron made him realize he needed an enormous budget or he needed technology that hadn't matured yet...