A Study on the Audiovisual Montage of “Vltava” in the Film Score of“The Tree of Life”

Abstract

The film score of “The Tree of Life” extensively employs European classical music works. One of the widely circulated scenes uses the symphonic poem “Vltava” from “My Country” as the background music. This article combines the interdisciplinary analysis method of film analysis and music analysis to conduct frame-by-frame analysis of this soundtrack scene, attempting to explore the audiovisual montage effect produced by the combination of this soundtrack and the picture. In the analysis and discussion, this article also elaborates on the promoting role of music in the narrative of films, as well as how the soundtrack can be combined with editing to organically integrate the narrative rhythm and the narrative of the music.