I agree about the various artists approach. I don't care whether or not it works - I dislike the use of pop songs in films. It is crude and simplistic to slap a song underneath a scene. Any moron can do that. It also reduces film music to absolutely the lowest conceivable level artistically.
Audiences will support the art house films because there will always be a market for truly good films, despite what the MBAs from Harvard who now control the film industry think.
Some other films that had absolutely no music were the later Bunuel films, Phantom of Liberty and Discreet Charm of the Bourgoisie. Those are brilliant films, and they did not suffer at all from no music. If anything they were better because they had an irony and starkness that any commentary from music would have ruined. Also, Tarkovsky - who is now considered maybe the greatest of all filmmakers in history - had almost no music in his films. Stalker had a little, but mostly he avoided it.
The whole problem with film music is that it is always SAYING SOMETHING. A scene should simple be allowed to exist for its own reality, without a composer telling you what to think or feel about it.