🎬 #130 Alive With The Sound of Music.

Music in a film has the ability to totally transform it. To put it into a different league. Would 2001 be the film it is today without the decision to scrap all the original score and replace it with classical pieces? That film’s use of music is so powerful that you can no longer dissociate The Blue Danube from it - it owns the music. When any of the tracks play, you see the imagery from the film. Few films in history have achieved that power. All those tracks are now ‘space music.’

This week’s two films owe a huge debt to their respective composers.

Happy choosing, happy viewing

Bry

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FILM ONE: TRON: LEGACY

2010 Dir Joseph Kosinski
2 hrs 05 mins

Music composed by Daft Punk

Daft Punk’s score for this film is so good you could take a single still from the film, project it in the cinema and just listen to the soundtrack. To me, it’s 80 percent of the film - and that’s not disparaging to the rest of the film, just the fact that it’s so important to every aspect of the viewing experience. It’s the bold primary colour on the canvas that makes the painting what it is. It’s triumphant, bold - as energising as a score can be.

It’s so strong, that it propels everything in the frame. In a way, Daft Punk deserve equal billing to Kosinski. That’s how much of an impact the score has on the film. The combination of synth and strings make the visuals more vibrant, the colours more electronic, the blacks more black. It’s an amazing thing to enjoy, as a work of art, all by itself.

TL;DR: Tron: Legacy wouldn’t be the same film without Daft Punk’s perfect score.

*Available to stream and for a small rental fee on Apple, Amazon and Disney Plus in the US and the UK.

Fact: The highest budget ever given to a first time feature filmmaker - $170 million. Bonus: Cillian Murphy has an uncredited cameo in an early scene.

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FILM TWO: JOKER

2019 Dir Todd Phillips
2 hrs 02 mins

Music composed by Hildur Guðnadóttir

If someone else had composed the score to Joker, it wouldn’t be half the film it is. Again, like Tron, the film owes so much to the character and atmosphere generated by the music. The culmination of which, for me, is during the scene pictured above. It’s a good scene without the music but it is fundamentally transformed by the score.

The music serves to bring the undercurrents of tragedy to the surface. Making the moment feel grander, more dread filled. This is the soundtrack to the birth of a psychopathic character. The music is from deep within him, the power emerging in one horrifying, string-vibration filled movement. Like her score for Chernobyl, her music here amplifies the horror, the violence. I can’t imagine the film without it.

TL;DR: JOKER owes its dark heart to Hildur’s gorgeous, menacing collection of notes.

*Available for a small rental fee on Apple and Amazon in the US and the UK.

Fact: The first R-rated film that grossed over $1 Billion worldwide.