Why ‘Poor Things’ Should Have Won Best Original Score
As the 96th Academy Awards approached this last month, I found myself particularly invested in the category of Best Original Score. It had become increasingly my impression that Oppenheimer would win in many categories, but I couldn't help but hope that it wouldn't nab Best Original Score. I had felt similarly about the previous year's score for All Quiet On the Western Front. My predictions in both years resulted from a gradual shift in film score trends over the last five years especially, and the last three Oscar-winning scores seem to have solidified this trend. It is worth examining the trends, both before and after this shift, and what the alternatives might be.
The Downbeat of Change: 2020-2021
For decades, full orchestra scores have stood as the golden standard for cinematic music. The resounding melodies and rich textures presented by the likes of Alfred Newman, Bernard Herrmann, John Williams, Ennio Morricone, and more recently Danny Elfman, Howard Shore, and Michael Giacchino among so many others have stood as the foundations for a towering tradition in the film industry. Even the recording methods of these large orchestras were fairly standardized until the last decade or two.
Recording methods were the first methods to change in the industry. Hildur Guðnadóttir's score for Joker is a prime recent example, winning an Oscar for best original score in 2020. It uses a string orchestra almost exclusively but is recorded so close to the strings as to absorb all the extra noise that comes with these instruments. Some might call it "air" in the sound, others call it "road noise," but the effect of this extra sound is one of deep intimacy, matching the intimacy the viewer might feel with the main character of the film. The score is innovative in this way but sadly in this way only, with the actual musical content being, in my opinion, lackluster at best.
It was to be the Oscar winner of 2021 that would truly change the landscape of film scoring. Hans Zimmer's score for Dune seemed to catch the industry by complete surprise, and not just because of the striking and immediately iconic voice of Loire Cotler. Zimmer has been vocal about his ideals for scoring sci-fi epics and used Dune as an opportunity to put those ideals into practice. He turned away from the Western Classical tradition (at least instrumentally) and embraced the alienism that can be imbued through electronic sounds. Even out of the acoustic instruments he does use for the film, many of them are constructed from scratch and then altered electronically.
Dune was far from Zimmer's first voyage into electronic sounds and production tools while building a film score. As far back as 2008's The Dark Knight, electronic alteration and synthetic sounds became a critical piece of Zimmer's scores. Production also became increasingly important, using various techniques to disrupt the acoustical nature of the instruments and voices and steer the listeners' ears to various aspects of the written score. While Inception still features a full orchestra, it too pushes the boundaries of sound manipulation, and Interstellar goes steps beyond that with its use of organ mixed with synthetic sounds to coagulate into an intensely shimmering score. However, The reason Dunehas made such a lasting impression and probably why it won Best Original Score is it finally bends so far into using production tools that any semblance of a full orchestra is essentially unrecognizable. While many of those instruments are used, they are disguised behind layers of production and alteration. It went on to make history being the first Oscar-winning score to not feature a traditional full orchestra sound.
Where my concerns begin is not with the soundtrack to Dune. It is a largely successful score; Zimmer establishes a sound world that wholly belongs to the film. It has properly varied characteristics that represent House Atreides (the newcomers to Arrakis), the Fremen (the native people of Arrakis), as well as other social groups within the story. In addition, it has a shared language across the score that universally places the viewer on the planet. And while Zimmer does avoid traditional instrumentation, there are plenty of instances of simple chord progressions and thematic materials scattered into the musical textures that help to ground the average viewer so as not to push them too far beyond their standards of musical consumption.
Electronic manipulation and changes in instrumentation are in no way the enemy to the future of film scoring. They are incredibly useful tools and can enhance the effect of a score if smartly applied. But Dune was bound to release a torrent of creativity in other composers and with that many good and bad final products. While I would not count the following two years' Best Original Score winners among the bad, I would go so far as to say they were not the most innovative or worthy nominees. Let's discuss why.
How Can Three Notes Beat Infinite Worlds: 2022
There is a good chance that Volker Bertelmann won an Oscar for All Quiet On the Western Front simply for creating sounds that seem antithetical to the period of the film but sound nearly as violent as its visuals. This tug-and-pull of reality for the listener/viewer experience is jarring. Broad strokes of sostenuto strings underlie a soundtrack filled with mechanical sound effects, interruptive percussion strikes, synthetic screeches and howls, and an electronically produced three-note motive that recurs throughout.
In theory, this is an interesting concept for this film. The strings complement the wide landscape cinematography, and the added sound effects and drums can be quickly tracked to the introduction of 20th-century technologies into war, supporting the setting immensely. The three-note motif is seemingly meant to imbue a sense of constant danger that can erupt from anywhere at any time, along with perhaps impending doom. On paper, I get it. But in reality, there is very little "music" written for this movie. The sostenuto strings invoke Hildur Guðnadóttir's Joker score but for the most part without the unique recording methods, and thus come across as flat. The sound effects are just that: sound effects; and the three-note motif simply grows tiresome after two or three uses. The score represents an overuse of production tools in a way that resembles sound design more than composition.
Meanwhile, the band Son Lux similarly followed Zimmer's lead in incorporating a consistent bevy of electronically made or sculpted sounds in their score to the Indie hit Everything Everywhere All At Once. The genius of this score lies in how well it reflects every aspect of the film. While the script moves us through a series of infinite universes and the protagonist is struggling to hang on to their identity and understand what their "true self" may be, the score dodges between recognizable acoustic sounds, extended instrumental techniques, MIDI orchestral sounds, production-type material, and electronically made sounds. Both film and score are maximalist, disorienting the viewer in equal measure. Rarely is there a sense of groundedness, but the most human moments are represented by the sound of a solo Erhu, a nod to the basic story of an East Asian immigrant family that the movie truly represents.
For the Academy, a three-note jump-scare motif filled with atmospheric sounds has more of a "wow" factor, but I think the bigger reason the score for Everything Everywhere All At Once went overlooked was that it matches the film almost too well. It so perfectly encapsulates the story told and the disorientation that the protagonist was going through that it escapes notice.
Atmosphere over Meaning: 2023
When you compare the score for Black Panther to the score for Oppenheimer, there can be no question that young film composer Ludwig Göransson is feeling the pressure of all these changes in the industry and wanting to keep on top of the trends. Black Panther is more or less a traditional orchestral score apart from the enormous Djembe part that truly makes it stand apart. Oppenheimer, on the other hand, is held together by threads of a simple theme made up of two descending fifths and a few distinct sound effects, very similar to All Quiet On the Western Front but generally more introverted.
In interviews, Göransson describes his melody as the emotional part of the score, but the reality of it is an esoteric and overly simple theme that can barely be called a melody. Simple melodies are not inherently bad, but they cannot be the heart of a score. It is how they transform, develop, and potentially fight against or at least interact with the rest of the music that can make it come to life. Oppenheimer lacks these qualities, and the methods Göransson uses to reflect the content of the script in his music come across as shallow.
For example, in the track "Can You Hear the Music?" Göransson writes with purpose in response to the chemical reaction that occurs when an atomic bomb explodes. This is represented by a very simple figure played by a large unison violin section that goes up and down, then gradually speeds up as it repeats. Other production materials are added in an almost John Adams minimalist style (the score uses this style frequently) that also accelerate, but they are mainly repeated triads with little draw or direction. With an over-reliance on layering without exceptional execution, the score fails to generate true combustion. I wouldn't go so far as to call it bad by any means, but I would argue it produces only an atmosphere for the movie, lacking a true musical representation of the characters, their interactions, their struggles, and moreover the society in which the events of this film took place.
So what makes the score for Poor Things stand out to me so much more than Oppenheimer, especially considering this was the first film for the even younger English composer Jerskin Fendrix?
[Warning: spoilers ahead for Poor Things].
Poor Things is a Frankensteinian tale of a baby's brain being inserted into a fully grown, physically mature female body. The bizarre events and behaviors that occur as we follow the protagonist, Bella Baxter, draw an accelerated maturation on the screen as Bella discovers the world for herself socially, philosophically, sexually, and emotionally. While the character of Bella matures and experiences all of life for the first time in the context of this alternate-universe period-piece world created by director Yorgos Yanthimos, the score goes through its own maturation process, almost developing through an alternate history of Western Classical Music.
When we first are introduced to Bella, she is a wobbly, dumb toddler-type still trying to learn to walk. The music reflects her stumbling and her overall simplicity with a pseudo-harp, slightly pitch-shifted into each triad. It is almost Pythagorean in its simplicity (see: Bella). It is familiar but also off balance. From there we discover a Renaissance-inspired vocabulary, full of woodwind melismas and somewhat bizarre counterpoint (see: "Wee"). In "Mother of God" we immediately recognize a Passacaglia motif, played by an early Baroque-sounding organ paired with bassoon and some other odd-sounding instruments paired in.
The next three numbers sound like some of the more meditative Baroque numbers for solo instruments by composers such as Telemann or maybe Vivaldi. Then "I Just Hope She's Alright" is a direct nod to the textures and harmonies of Vivaldi or maybe Scarlatti. Lison and "Goodbye Later Dove" introduce more dissonance, but maintain textural clarity - very much a classical approach. Sandwiched between them are the two Portuguese dances. These are surprisingly not out of place in the progression: Mozart was obsessed with using Turkish folk tunes in his operas and concertos. Finally out of the "classical" style works, Duncan and Martha has a Mozart Requiem-esque flavor.
Alexandria throws the listener into the luscious sounds of romanticism. Textures suddenly become richer, harmonies denser, and dynamics much wider. In addition, an extremely passionate melody is introduced in the strings with an Accordian-sounding instrument interrupting with its own slightly dissonant counter-melody, all over pedal points in the organ. Paris explores Debussian textures, and Londonprovides a gorgeous chorale that could be found in any Schumann symphony.
Alfie brings us to a new style altogether - not necessarily more atonal than anything we've experienced previously, but music that evokes the same uneasiness that much atonal music is so good at. It is neither ugly nor beautiful, and it accomplishes its bizarre effects by introducing new sounds, seemingly un-acoustic. The rest of the music leading up to the end credits returns to a more normal musical language (relative to what has already been established) but retains its modernity. It is solemn, featuring Bella's main theme from the very opening, but this time with an almost Arvo Pärt sensibility. Simple, but not historical.
What is stunning about this sweeping score is that these disparate styles are fused seamlessly with a few brilliantly constructed themes. Somehow, they work within all the described contexts, and in the end credits music the contexts themselves seem to be congealed. Whether Jerskin intended his music to directly reflect the progressive periods of Western Classical Music or not, the listener has their own series of experiences that seem to build successively upon each other. In the context of the film, this development goes hand-in-hand with Bella's evolution as a character.
Music that lives outside of film is naturally reflective of society outside of film, and so music within film should reflect the society found within a given film. Whether scoring for a full orchestra or producing a score using a DAW and a single microphone, film composers have a responsibility to build out not only a sound world but an aesthetic of sound that carries with it the ideology of a film. Jerkin Fendrix does exactly that with his score for Poor Things. Not only does he build out an entirely unique musical language for the film that is aesthetically fitting, but he also links it to the character of Bella and her narrative in multiple ways, both subtle and not. There is a truth that can be found in his score that I find lacking in the score for Oppenheimer, and that kind of truth is what viewers (and listeners) should expect from the best film scores going forward.
-P