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So the race for the Oscars is officially underway the Academy this week, has announced its final short list of nominees for

everything including of course the contenders for Best Original Score

it's the category I'm always most interested in so this week I thought I'd re-share a conversation

I had with last year's Oscar winner,

Volker Bertelman.

His original score for the film All Quiet

on the Western Front was chilling and stark and beautiful and in a lot of ways very

simple. Oh, Throughout the score, Bergelman uses the same three notes, those three simple little notes to convey a broad range of emotions.

There's fear and loneliness and grief.

At times those notes obliterate everything in their path.

And in other moments, they're restrained and delicate.

It's just an incredible motif. Oh, One of the reasons these three simple notes works so well is that even as simple as they are, they keep surprising you.

And that's one of the biggest challenges that Bertelman and the film's director, Edward Berger,

faced with All Quiet on the Western Front, a story that has been told so many times in so many ways, it seems like

it'd be impossible to have any more surprises in it.

But Bertelman says he and Berger started by breaking down conventions.

Edward said to me, please do something that is destroying the pictures that is not, you know,

underlining what we already see we don't need that we it's already all

there and then he said I want to have something for Paul Boomer's stomach who is

...