‘Baby Driver’ Is a Love Letter to Sound in Cinema
‘Baby Driver’ makes sound an instrumental part of a film that is guaranteed to be a classic
*SPOILERS FOLLOW*
From the opening moments of Baby Driver, the audience can hear an audible ringing sound. The same sound that Baby, the film’s titular character, hears all the time because of an accident he was in as a child, giving him tinnitus. This ringing sound sets up a first-person perspective that the audience is not accustomed to hearing, hearing being the operative word. Throughout the film, what Baby hears, the audience also hears.
The use of sound and music has never before been so instrumental in a movie that seemed to have nothing to do with either of those. On the surface, Baby Driver seems like your typical heist, insane driving, action movie. It is all of those aspects, and so much more. Sound becomes its own character in the film, accurately portraying the moods, feelings, emotions, and beats of every scene in the movie.
Every single action that Baby takes is accompanied by sound, or the absence of it. Baby listens to music 24/7 to deal with the tinnitus, and the music becomes the beat of his life. Throughout the entirety of the film, Baby is walking, dancing, driving, and doing just about everything to the sound of…
