Road to the Oscars, Part 5
2010′s Best Original Score Winner — Up
For Your Consideration, Vol. 3:
Music to My Ears
Music dictates tone, emotion, and flow in movies. A theme played at the right moment can cause chills or create tears. Or, like in Jaws, a cue can become the voice of a character, or a warning sign of the events to come. Music can dictate the pacing of the film, or contradict the visuals on screen to transform the scene into the ultimate example of irony. A film’s music, whether composed originally or compiled from various artists, is as inseparable as its characters.
The Last Airbender
James Newton Howard has stuck by M. Night Shyamalan through thick and thin. Together, the two of them have created powerful, musical atmospheres and themes that perhaps only the duo of Steven Spielberg and John Williams can defy. Howard’s work on The Last Airbender is sure to be ignored by the Academy, because of the visual bile that was poured out upon the world this last summer, but the score is phenomenal. The themes range from pounding to elegant, and are sadly more fleshed out than the world of the movie itself. Even if you hated Airbender, you must listen to the music. On the scale of Howard-Shyamalan scores, the brilliance of The Last Airbender rivals Lady in the Water, a film that was proclaimed by many to contain the best score of its respective year but was also ignored by the Academy. I hope that lightning does not strike twice. If Norbit can be nominated for a makeup Oscar, then I’ll be damned if The Last Airbender can’t get one for music, but even if James Newton Howard does get snubbed, I just hope that Daft Punk doesn’t.
TRON: Legacy
What can I say? Daft Punk delivered. The hype was warranted. TRON: Legacy’s score is an organic extension of the world of the Grid. It’s like the world — its buildings and vehicles — is emitting the music. Legacy was met with mixed reactions from critics and audiences after 28 years of hopes and dreams, but there’s been mostly acclaim for Daft Punk’s score. It’s ambient and never subtle, and constantly alive and vibrant. It’s a score that could easily go unrecognized because of how nontraditional and unorthodox it is, but I really hope that Legacy is not devoid of this Oscar nomination.
Inception
When Hans Zimmer composed the score for Inception, Chris Nolan was still shooting the film and kept crucial information about the plot at arms’ length from the composer. The idea was for Zimmer to seek out other sources that would spark his imagination, instead of being completely influenced by the material presented by Nolan. The score that Zimmer delivered is a powerful, driving-force of the film that is completely unrelenting. If TRON: Legacy’s music is a part of the Grid, then Inception’s score is another character. It races along with the others, jumping from each level of the dream to the next; it’s that important; a character that’s every bit as menacing, tragic, and beautiful as the film’s antagonist, Molly. Had the next two films been “worthy” of nominations, then Inception might have had some stiff competition.
DISQUALIFIED — Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1
Two of my favorite scores aren’t eligible for the Academy Award because they use too much pre-existing musical cues and themes. It’s a travesty that no one but John Williams could ever have a shot at winning an Oscar for a Harry Potter score, because his successors like Nicholas Hooper and Patrick Doyle did fantastic work utilizing a small amount of themes from Williams’ original Sorcerer’s Stone score. Alexandre Desplat and his Deathly Hallows Part 1 score is the latest victim of this technicality. The music is great. It’s dark and epic, like an end-game Harry Potter should sound like. To my surprise, the score is far more subdued than Half-Blood Prince, which was gorgeous in its undertones and lack of major, uproarious, bombastic themes which have riddled the Potter films since the beginning. There’s nothing wrong with either, but I love that this penultimate chapter of the legendary franchise has music like that. In a way, it makes the “holocaustic” atmosphere of the film more poignant and tragic. It’s an excellent score that’ll be ignored when it shouldn’t.
DISQUALIFIED — Black Swan
For using themes from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, Clint Mansell’s score for Black Swan will get shafted this year. Mansell is most famous for the theme created for Requiem for a Dream, which has become legendary for its appearance in other movies’ trailers. Mansell’s been the long-time composer for Darren Aronofsky, and the two of them came up with one of my favorites film scores ever: The Fountain. Mansell takes the same ambient, in-your-head approach as The Fountain but mixes in classical cues to create one of the most beautiful and eerie scores in recent memory. Like the plot of the film itself, the score is a twisted version of Swan Lake; taking Tchaikosky’s original music and contorting it. It’s the perfect underline for a gorgeously sadistic movie, and like TRON: Legacy and Inception, the score is inseparable from the film itself.
