Top 7 - Best Musical Scores in Film
It's a filler week again, sorry everyone. Hustlers and The Goldfinch came out in the US this past weekend but tickets are cheapest on a Tuesday (that being today) so I'm afraid you'll have to wait another week for one or both of those (haven't decided yet). Instead, we're going to do a list that I thought I had already done but actually haven't. Back in the day (I think three, maybe four years ago?), I did a bunch of lists about the best soundtracks and uses of music in films and TV and the like but looking back, I realised I never did one for film scores. To clarify for anyone who doesn't know the difference, a soundtrack for a film is when pre-existing music is used in the film (think Guardians of the Galaxy or most of Tarantino's films) whereas a score is when a composer is brought on to write music specifically for use in the film.
As usual, this whole list is just my opinion so don't get mad about iconic scores being left out. Musicals have been left out because I feel like a whole album of originally written music with lyrics starts to become its own thing? I dunno, musicals have never been my kind of thing but leaving them out is not meant as an insult, more like leaving a space for them in the future. Also, where albums of the original score have included pre-existing music alongside original work, I've tried to leave that out of consideration because that isn't really fair. Finally, I have included my favourite track off each score with each entry so that if you want to go away and listen to a snippet of each score (which I highly recommend doing!), you have some great places to start. With all that done, onto the honourable mentions!
Favourite track: Lady Bird
Using just his score, Jon Brion is able to perfectly encapsulate the range of emotions that Lady Bird experiences throughout the film; from joy, to trepidation, to an ultimate sense of loss. It's a gentle score but one that is surprisingly powerful.
Favourite Track: Welcome to Lunar Industries
My fave boi, Clint Mansell's score for Moon gives away the emotional secret to the film; it isn't some grand sci-fi film but instead an intimate drama about one man discovering things about himself that are better left untouched.
Favourite Track: Heptapod B
Admittedly, my favourite piece of music from Arrival is actually a separate piece written by Max Richter (the one listed above is original, don't worry), but that shouldn't undercut Jóhannsson's brilliant work on a sublime score that creates as powerful a sense of scale as any visuals are able to.
Favourite Track: Little Person
Brion gave notes of melancholy to Lady Bird but he delivered truckloads of the stuff for Charlie Kaufman's indescribable Synecdoche, New York. Makes me feel like just some little person every time, without fail.
Favourite Track: Ywnrh
In a year that also included work from Greenwood on Phantom Thread and from band mate Thom Yorke on Suspiria, the best music made by one of the Radiohead lot came from this utter nightmare of a film, whose score threatens to bludgeon you with a hammer between bouts of beauty.
Favourite Track: Cinema Paradiso
Probably not the Ennio Morricone score you were expecting, but certainly the one I love most. There is just something about the score for Cinema Paradiso that epitomises the beauty of Italy and cinema, creating a power with its soaring motif throughout the entire film.
Favourite Track: Eden (Harlem)
The newest entry on the list, there's an argument to be had that the score for If Beale Street Could Talk could stand alone from the film. It doesn't have to though, pairing with equally exquisite images like the perfect wine to a steak dinner.
And so, having already covered seven scores that barely avoided the top 7, it's time for us to start actually ranking these and hearing some of the best work that film composers have ever done (ya know, in my opinion)
Favourite Track: Montage
You may know Swiss Army Man as the movie where Daniel Radcliffe, formerly the most beloved boy wizard of the 21st century, plays a farting corpse that keeps a suicidal man company. It's appropriate to say that the film is very strange, something that comes across in the brilliantly unique score for the film. See, when making the film, the directors (who go by the name "Daniels") talked about two things they hated: fart jokes and acapella. So they did what any sane director would do and tried to make a film full of exactly those things. What you end up with is an etheral score that traverses a shocking amount of emotional terrain. Parts are joyous, parts are sad, parts definitely sound like there's masturbation noises in there. There's even a cover of Cotton Eye Joe, because why not? Perhaps my favourite thing about it though is how certain bits of the score have been absorbed into pop culture without anyone realising their source. For example, my favourite bit of the score, Montage, has been used a bunch in a recent eBay advert. Give the song a listen and you may be shocked to find you recognise a song from the farting corpse movie. All in all, it is a score that remains super playful and delight inducing even when it's time to play it straight and just like the rest of the film, it works when it has absolutely zero right to do so.
Favourite Track: Dead Already
A lot of the time, I'll put on film scores in the background when I'm revising. The fact that I can put it on in the background as something to focus me isn't necessarily high praise but even with that said, there is something that impresses me about how American Beauty's score works so well as an accompaniment. The film this score is being served with is one full of some really gut busting comedy, deep suburban sadness and also an uncomfortable dose of Kevin Spacey and while much in the film helps keep it afloat, I believe that that strength of that connective tissue comes from the score. On its surface, it is breezy and upbeat, the kind of music that if personified would basically be Lester Burnham's wife. Underneath however, it is a score in agony, taking the odd track to writhe in pain and scream for help or boast of its seediness. I dunno, I don't think I have much more to say on this one, it's just a score that has remained in my heart even as I've begun questioning my relation to the actual film. Good stuff!
Favourite Track: Exhibition
I'm pretty sure I've gone into detail before about the strange relationship I have with this film, having first seen it in a horrifically hungover state, before returning to it last year and having something of a revelation, as a masterpiece appeared before my eyes. Perhaps even more so than American Beauty, Nocturnal Animals is a film about savage beauty, in every single facet of its existence. The cinematography is sharp enough to cut yourself on, the cast look as great as they act and the editing creates a beguiling smoothness. The score, of course, does that too. It presents an exqusite veneer of string music, powerful enough to give me goosebumps just thinking about it, before mutating into something nastier. Pieces of the film begin to slip through, starting with the gentle breathing of Amy Adams, before the anger and sinister power of certain characters begins to bleed through all the layers of the story and visuals, ending up pooling in the score. If Nocturnal Animals is a film that owes plenty of debts to some of Hitchcock's more twisted ouevre, then Abel Korzeniowski's score is in equally great debt to the work of Bernard Herrmann. It's so good in fact, that it almost tops anything Herrmann ever did. Almost.
Favourite Track: Carlotta's Portrait
On most of these lists I do, Vertigo usually ends up on them, and I appreciate that sometimes, it probably does feel like it's just here as the token pre-70's film to make me seem sophisticated and to give the impression that I don't just watch stuff from the last decade. It is certainly not that. Rather, it earns its place on merits of pure brilliance, over me bowing to general critical reverence. Herrmann worked with Hitchcock plenty, creating countless iconic scores, the most iconic of which is probably the screeching violins used in the Psycho shower scene. I believe his most vital work, however, was with Vertigo. Much of Vertigo is these brilliantly restrained shots of Jimmy Stewart driving around San Francisco, trailing a woman he later comes to decide might hold the answers he's looking for. The cinematography does wonders for these sections too but no, it's that score that always keeps me in my seat. He uses strings, just like in Psycho, only for completely different effect. Vertigo is a really baffling movie emotionally, one that takes plenty of watches to actually get your heart around and the score aids that atmosphere. What seems to be romance could be disaster, what may be danger could be seduction. It is as precisely ambiguous as the film it accompanies and I adore both with all of my pretentious, film loving heart.
Favourite Track: Lonliness #3 (Night Talking)
So, this one grew on me recently in a massive, massive way. I saw her around the time it first came out and I thought it was just wonderful. Then, as time moved on, technology started to catch up with the film and I experienced a deeper sense of romantic loneliness than I have ever felt before, I returned to it, meeting it at a cross-section between my Spike Jonze binge and my Arcade Fire awakening and re-discovering one of the finest films of the decade. The film came out around the same time as Arcade Fire's album Reflektor (their best work, in my humble opinion) and the score evokes that same technological melancholy, going so far as to even include the song Supersymmetry in the film. These feed perfectly into the emotional tone of the film, which is, in part, about feeling very lonely in a very busy world. As I was gesturing towards, I suffer from really intense feelings of melancholy and loneliness quite a lot, losing myself in the labyrinth of my own mind, a sensation that this score embodies better than any other filmic score I've yet to hear. Like the film itself though, this is not a score to go for the easy emotional impact. It's never intending to make you bawl your eyes out through melodrama, rather going for a gentle score that is weirdly comforting in how it confirms those feelings of loneliness. I say this as someone who has become quite a big Arcade Fire fan, I think this score may be the best work they've ever done and it's a crime that it isn't available to buy anywhere.
Favourite Track: In Motion
Trent Reznor is most famous as the front man of the hard metal band Nine Inch Nails, creating a kind of vibe that I've never really been into, although the way his work was incorporated into things like Seven or Twin Peaks: The Return always managed to win me over partially. At the start of the decade though, he teamed up with Atticus Ross to start making a film score for old friend David Fincher and his film, The Social Network. I recently lavished praise all over this bad boy so if you want to read more of that, check out the current update about my favourite films ever made from a month or so ago. Anyway, the long and short of it is that part of the reason I adore this film is the score, a pulsing techno beat that works in brilliant tandem with the story of a lonely nerd who becomes a young, lonely billionaire. An essential early sequence of the film, in which Zuckerberg codes FaceSmash, works so well entirely because of the score. Sure, the camerawork is slick, yes, the writing is brilliant, but this score is the reason it works, each beat of the score pushing us closer towards the inevitable future that we know is waiting for Zuckerberg and crew. It's music that should sound abrasive and yet, when paired with the cutthroat world of Harvard, it doesn't seem so nasty. As an added bonus, this is probably the very best film score to revise to, not being too abrasive to distract you but giving you enough momentum to push you through that essay. It is a work of utter genius and I go back to it on an almost monthly basis, because it just deserves it.
Favourite Track: Ghosts of a Future Lost
And so, reaching the finish line, we return to Clint Mansell. I don't believe I've talked about Requiem for a Dream a lot on the blog and frankly, that's because it is such a difficult watch that I've only been able to bring myself to watch it the once. That blu-ray sits on my shelf, daring me to approach again but I don't yet have the nerve. Even listening to the score can be a little too close to PTSD for my liking and that is why I think it is so brilliant. I can't listen to this score for fun like I do with The Social Network, Nocturnal Animals or even Vertigo, because it is so deeply linked to the displeasure at the core of Requiem. Just as the film does, it offers a balance between the highs and lows of the experiences of these junkies. Sometimes, it is beauty threatening to collapse into horror, as the film progresses it moves more into attacking the listener with noise but in this sweet spot in between, we have Ghosts of a Future Lost. Lux Aeterna is the iconic piece with the angry violins that everyone will have heard somewhere and thought "blimey, that was a bit full on" but Ghosts of a Future Lost is the most heartbreaking melody film has ever delivered. As the title suggests, it is an ode to lost hope, a place without pain but one that is filling up with sadness. At the emotional low point of the film, it is there to baste the audience with regret and it is exceptionally powerful. I don't want to see the film again any time soon and the score fills me with similar dread, but it is such a perfect construction of score to deliver the power and themes of the film that I cannot help but give it the top spot. Watch it once, listen to it twice, then just leave it for a while and think about what you've done.
As usual, this whole list is just my opinion so don't get mad about iconic scores being left out. Musicals have been left out because I feel like a whole album of originally written music with lyrics starts to become its own thing? I dunno, musicals have never been my kind of thing but leaving them out is not meant as an insult, more like leaving a space for them in the future. Also, where albums of the original score have included pre-existing music alongside original work, I've tried to leave that out of consideration because that isn't really fair. Finally, I have included my favourite track off each score with each entry so that if you want to go away and listen to a snippet of each score (which I highly recommend doing!), you have some great places to start. With all that done, onto the honourable mentions!
Lady Bird, composed by Jon Brion
Favourite track: Lady Bird
Using just his score, Jon Brion is able to perfectly encapsulate the range of emotions that Lady Bird experiences throughout the film; from joy, to trepidation, to an ultimate sense of loss. It's a gentle score but one that is surprisingly powerful.
Moon, composed by Clint Mansell
Favourite Track: Welcome to Lunar Industries
My fave boi, Clint Mansell's score for Moon gives away the emotional secret to the film; it isn't some grand sci-fi film but instead an intimate drama about one man discovering things about himself that are better left untouched.
Arrival, composed by Jóhann Jóhannsson
Favourite Track: Heptapod B
Admittedly, my favourite piece of music from Arrival is actually a separate piece written by Max Richter (the one listed above is original, don't worry), but that shouldn't undercut Jóhannsson's brilliant work on a sublime score that creates as powerful a sense of scale as any visuals are able to.
Synecdoche, New York, composed by Jon Brion
Favourite Track: Little Person
Brion gave notes of melancholy to Lady Bird but he delivered truckloads of the stuff for Charlie Kaufman's indescribable Synecdoche, New York. Makes me feel like just some little person every time, without fail.
You Were Never Really Here, composed by Jonny Greenwood
Favourite Track: Ywnrh
In a year that also included work from Greenwood on Phantom Thread and from band mate Thom Yorke on Suspiria, the best music made by one of the Radiohead lot came from this utter nightmare of a film, whose score threatens to bludgeon you with a hammer between bouts of beauty.
Cinema Paradiso, composed by Ennio Morricone
Favourite Track: Cinema Paradiso
Probably not the Ennio Morricone score you were expecting, but certainly the one I love most. There is just something about the score for Cinema Paradiso that epitomises the beauty of Italy and cinema, creating a power with its soaring motif throughout the entire film.
If Beale Street Could Talk, composed by Nicholas Britell
Favourite Track: Eden (Harlem)
The newest entry on the list, there's an argument to be had that the score for If Beale Street Could Talk could stand alone from the film. It doesn't have to though, pairing with equally exquisite images like the perfect wine to a steak dinner.
And so, having already covered seven scores that barely avoided the top 7, it's time for us to start actually ranking these and hearing some of the best work that film composers have ever done (ya know, in my opinion)
7. Swiss Army Man, composed by Andy Hull and Robert McDowell
Favourite Track: Montage
You may know Swiss Army Man as the movie where Daniel Radcliffe, formerly the most beloved boy wizard of the 21st century, plays a farting corpse that keeps a suicidal man company. It's appropriate to say that the film is very strange, something that comes across in the brilliantly unique score for the film. See, when making the film, the directors (who go by the name "Daniels") talked about two things they hated: fart jokes and acapella. So they did what any sane director would do and tried to make a film full of exactly those things. What you end up with is an etheral score that traverses a shocking amount of emotional terrain. Parts are joyous, parts are sad, parts definitely sound like there's masturbation noises in there. There's even a cover of Cotton Eye Joe, because why not? Perhaps my favourite thing about it though is how certain bits of the score have been absorbed into pop culture without anyone realising their source. For example, my favourite bit of the score, Montage, has been used a bunch in a recent eBay advert. Give the song a listen and you may be shocked to find you recognise a song from the farting corpse movie. All in all, it is a score that remains super playful and delight inducing even when it's time to play it straight and just like the rest of the film, it works when it has absolutely zero right to do so.
6. American Beauty, composed by Thomas Newman
Favourite Track: Dead Already
A lot of the time, I'll put on film scores in the background when I'm revising. The fact that I can put it on in the background as something to focus me isn't necessarily high praise but even with that said, there is something that impresses me about how American Beauty's score works so well as an accompaniment. The film this score is being served with is one full of some really gut busting comedy, deep suburban sadness and also an uncomfortable dose of Kevin Spacey and while much in the film helps keep it afloat, I believe that that strength of that connective tissue comes from the score. On its surface, it is breezy and upbeat, the kind of music that if personified would basically be Lester Burnham's wife. Underneath however, it is a score in agony, taking the odd track to writhe in pain and scream for help or boast of its seediness. I dunno, I don't think I have much more to say on this one, it's just a score that has remained in my heart even as I've begun questioning my relation to the actual film. Good stuff!
5. Nocturnal Animals, composed by Abel Korzeniowski
Favourite Track: Exhibition
I'm pretty sure I've gone into detail before about the strange relationship I have with this film, having first seen it in a horrifically hungover state, before returning to it last year and having something of a revelation, as a masterpiece appeared before my eyes. Perhaps even more so than American Beauty, Nocturnal Animals is a film about savage beauty, in every single facet of its existence. The cinematography is sharp enough to cut yourself on, the cast look as great as they act and the editing creates a beguiling smoothness. The score, of course, does that too. It presents an exqusite veneer of string music, powerful enough to give me goosebumps just thinking about it, before mutating into something nastier. Pieces of the film begin to slip through, starting with the gentle breathing of Amy Adams, before the anger and sinister power of certain characters begins to bleed through all the layers of the story and visuals, ending up pooling in the score. If Nocturnal Animals is a film that owes plenty of debts to some of Hitchcock's more twisted ouevre, then Abel Korzeniowski's score is in equally great debt to the work of Bernard Herrmann. It's so good in fact, that it almost tops anything Herrmann ever did. Almost.
4. Vertigo, composed by Bernard Herrmann
Favourite Track: Carlotta's Portrait
On most of these lists I do, Vertigo usually ends up on them, and I appreciate that sometimes, it probably does feel like it's just here as the token pre-70's film to make me seem sophisticated and to give the impression that I don't just watch stuff from the last decade. It is certainly not that. Rather, it earns its place on merits of pure brilliance, over me bowing to general critical reverence. Herrmann worked with Hitchcock plenty, creating countless iconic scores, the most iconic of which is probably the screeching violins used in the Psycho shower scene. I believe his most vital work, however, was with Vertigo. Much of Vertigo is these brilliantly restrained shots of Jimmy Stewart driving around San Francisco, trailing a woman he later comes to decide might hold the answers he's looking for. The cinematography does wonders for these sections too but no, it's that score that always keeps me in my seat. He uses strings, just like in Psycho, only for completely different effect. Vertigo is a really baffling movie emotionally, one that takes plenty of watches to actually get your heart around and the score aids that atmosphere. What seems to be romance could be disaster, what may be danger could be seduction. It is as precisely ambiguous as the film it accompanies and I adore both with all of my pretentious, film loving heart.
3. her, composed by Arcade Fire
Favourite Track: Lonliness #3 (Night Talking)
So, this one grew on me recently in a massive, massive way. I saw her around the time it first came out and I thought it was just wonderful. Then, as time moved on, technology started to catch up with the film and I experienced a deeper sense of romantic loneliness than I have ever felt before, I returned to it, meeting it at a cross-section between my Spike Jonze binge and my Arcade Fire awakening and re-discovering one of the finest films of the decade. The film came out around the same time as Arcade Fire's album Reflektor (their best work, in my humble opinion) and the score evokes that same technological melancholy, going so far as to even include the song Supersymmetry in the film. These feed perfectly into the emotional tone of the film, which is, in part, about feeling very lonely in a very busy world. As I was gesturing towards, I suffer from really intense feelings of melancholy and loneliness quite a lot, losing myself in the labyrinth of my own mind, a sensation that this score embodies better than any other filmic score I've yet to hear. Like the film itself though, this is not a score to go for the easy emotional impact. It's never intending to make you bawl your eyes out through melodrama, rather going for a gentle score that is weirdly comforting in how it confirms those feelings of loneliness. I say this as someone who has become quite a big Arcade Fire fan, I think this score may be the best work they've ever done and it's a crime that it isn't available to buy anywhere.
2. The Social Network, composed by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross
Favourite Track: In Motion
Trent Reznor is most famous as the front man of the hard metal band Nine Inch Nails, creating a kind of vibe that I've never really been into, although the way his work was incorporated into things like Seven or Twin Peaks: The Return always managed to win me over partially. At the start of the decade though, he teamed up with Atticus Ross to start making a film score for old friend David Fincher and his film, The Social Network. I recently lavished praise all over this bad boy so if you want to read more of that, check out the current update about my favourite films ever made from a month or so ago. Anyway, the long and short of it is that part of the reason I adore this film is the score, a pulsing techno beat that works in brilliant tandem with the story of a lonely nerd who becomes a young, lonely billionaire. An essential early sequence of the film, in which Zuckerberg codes FaceSmash, works so well entirely because of the score. Sure, the camerawork is slick, yes, the writing is brilliant, but this score is the reason it works, each beat of the score pushing us closer towards the inevitable future that we know is waiting for Zuckerberg and crew. It's music that should sound abrasive and yet, when paired with the cutthroat world of Harvard, it doesn't seem so nasty. As an added bonus, this is probably the very best film score to revise to, not being too abrasive to distract you but giving you enough momentum to push you through that essay. It is a work of utter genius and I go back to it on an almost monthly basis, because it just deserves it.
1. Requiem for a Dream, composed by Clint Mansell
Favourite Track: Ghosts of a Future Lost
And so, reaching the finish line, we return to Clint Mansell. I don't believe I've talked about Requiem for a Dream a lot on the blog and frankly, that's because it is such a difficult watch that I've only been able to bring myself to watch it the once. That blu-ray sits on my shelf, daring me to approach again but I don't yet have the nerve. Even listening to the score can be a little too close to PTSD for my liking and that is why I think it is so brilliant. I can't listen to this score for fun like I do with The Social Network, Nocturnal Animals or even Vertigo, because it is so deeply linked to the displeasure at the core of Requiem. Just as the film does, it offers a balance between the highs and lows of the experiences of these junkies. Sometimes, it is beauty threatening to collapse into horror, as the film progresses it moves more into attacking the listener with noise but in this sweet spot in between, we have Ghosts of a Future Lost. Lux Aeterna is the iconic piece with the angry violins that everyone will have heard somewhere and thought "blimey, that was a bit full on" but Ghosts of a Future Lost is the most heartbreaking melody film has ever delivered. As the title suggests, it is an ode to lost hope, a place without pain but one that is filling up with sadness. At the emotional low point of the film, it is there to baste the audience with regret and it is exceptionally powerful. I don't want to see the film again any time soon and the score fills me with similar dread, but it is such a perfect construction of score to deliver the power and themes of the film that I cannot help but give it the top spot. Watch it once, listen to it twice, then just leave it for a while and think about what you've done.
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