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Jaws John Williams

One score that will be completely overlooked in the whole flame war Dunkirk is gonna get.

In the future, we will each ask where were you when the flame war hit?

Chrissie Watkins = Poland
Ben Gardner = France
Alex Kintner = The Netherlands

Compelling interpretation. Quint obvious if you think about it.

Damn, I must have been, what, 13 (?) when I saw this thing in theatre and was still blown away by it. I'm sure if you'd have been 13, getting nothing but cute Disney mice all your life and then seeing this on the big screen, watching mean rats and heroic mice fighting to death with swords, and magic shit, psychotic cats and terrifying owls all around you while the speakers hit you with Goldsmith's intense action scoring (never mind the handful of beautiful themes!!!), you'd judge this one differently.

It doesn't help, of course, that the order of tracks is terribly mixed up.

Try the film order:
01. Main Title
02. Allergic Reaction
03. Flying Dreams Lullaby
04. The Tractor
05. No Thanks
06. Step Inside My House
07. The Story of Nimh
08. Escape from Nimh
09. Moving Day
10. The House Rising
11. End Title
12. Flying Dreams

While I love the whole score immensely (I must have listened several hundred times to the old LP), the first action and "horror" tracks can seem a bit chaotic (but they are not, if you pair them with what's happening on screen).

But about two minutes into The Story of Nimh, the score starts to really dig its teeth into the more epic, astounding part of the story, where you finally start to realise what the frak is going on here, and from then on it's a relentless, fantastic scorefeast.

And I think the whole "Moving Day" scene gave me the first cinematic goosebumps. Ever. And it was the year I really "discovered" scores for me, so there you go.

Thor will like it. you know, to keep up with the hipster tradition is the movie good? will watch it in a week or so.

Saw the movie this afternoon D, it's brilliant. Very intense, superbly filmed and a distinct lack of cgi to my eyes, the aerial combat sequence in stunningly shot. Images of this film stayed with me and I can't say that about too many recent films.

Score works well but I won't be listening to it outside the film.

Certainly. I just didn't feel like expanding on it in the moment, since I was quite struck by it.

First of all, I do not consider Dunkirk a regular score from a musical point of view, and will refrain from judging this work in that way. Hans (and Balfe, Wallfisch, etc.) created Dunkirk the score to support the visuals and the harrowing experience Nolan had in mind, and that is its sole purpose. The score taken out of context gave me an experience which could best be described as the gut emotional reaction of Dunkirk from an aural standpoint. I listened to it at night, in the dark, on my bed, concentrating only on the music and what it made me feel. After it was over I stared vacantly into the dark for quite a while.

If you haven't heard the score on its own yet, but what you no doubt know by now, is how Hans designed it solely to build tension and to immerse the audience in the action, doing so by creating a soundscape of engine sounds or sounds that are similar to it to mix with the sounddesign, while also being extremely minimalistic. The score as a result plays like the sound of fighter planes building into a maelstrom of raw tension, over and over again to hypnotising effect, balanced with more introspective moments of soundscaping that are best described as the aural representation of being shellshocked - long lines of synthesizer, with laid on top of that the sound of a lone trumpet (the solemn one you typically hear to honour the soldiers), but instead sound sampled with long lines, which represents for me the main theme of the film (heard in Shivering Soldier, and returning in Home (I believe) and at the end of End Credits. The sounds in these "drones" (don't like the term though, since it has such a negative connotation) are at times quite beautiful though.

Of course, this could be considered as the apex of the working relationship between Nolan and Zimmer, in which score blends with sound in a way they've been experimenting with in the past and now to maximum effect, but it's also a very carefully constructed sonic experience that should be valued as such. Hans did not simply throw this together and what he did create is a sound palette that is riveting in its own way, but is also quite a strong blow in the stomach. It's an exhausting, draining experience. Deliberately. When the emotional payoff comes, in the form of Wallfishes contributions (Elgar's Variation, as first heard at the end of Home, and in full in Variation 15), it's an emotional release that is well earned and left me speechless.

I haven't seen the film yet, but I've gotten a pretty good impression now of what to expect from it. And though I've felt a bit weird about the film before (with all the 'experience it in IMAX', summer blockbuster talk) how it might've been selling the war as some kind of adventure film, after hearing the music it's quite clear this is meant to be a hard hitting experience and true to the fact that 'war is hell'.

No idea, as I haven't seen it yet. Still debating about IMAX, or the 70MM showing which will come to The Netherlands in about a month. By the way, this is also not a score I will be returning to often (or at all, in its complete album presentation, perhaps), but I can appreciate the work for what it is in its own right.

Actually, I think it's more of an expansion of the hellish world of Synchrotone and the final sampled bit of Hunger. I mean, if you look at it, in Black Hawk Down Hans explored the very experience of being in the middle.

Sure, a lot of people on my message board think that they should go the Saving Private Ryan route (no score for battle scenes), but I think in terms of immersion, pure immersion, Nolan's masters are Ridley Scott (Blade Runner was famously the visual inspiration behind Batman Begins) and Terrence Malick (The Thin Red Line was the film that made him realize the power of the audiovisual aspect of film, especially sound). You could argue that Hans, having worked with both of his masters, was an "easy" composer choice, especially the choice of Thin Red Line (which Nolan wanted in Inception).

I have to see the film yet (early next week), but from the score album I would say... in philosophy there is this method called phenomenology. Throw away ("put in brackets") everything you assume and all your biases and analyze the pure experience. That's what Hans does in his war scores. He looks for the core of the experience. What does it mean to be in war. What it feels like. This is his inner pacifism speaking and in that way Malick shaped him forever. And sometimes he does that at the experience of the scope of the events. But considering the war films he scored, that's fine. Tears of the Sun is different, but it's more of an action thriller and it's more concerned with atrocities anyway.

I have to tell that to a friend of mine. He HATES The Tree of Life with a passion (claims it ruined a date for him), but he's a huge Nolan fanboy.

I'll get back to this score after I deal with the Apes review, hopefully in two weeks.

I'd agree this is the best Spidey score though I enjoy Horner's Spidey score more it just isn't a proper Spidey score. Giacchino captures what Spidey should be.

Interesting. I think Giacchino's Spidey score is middle of the road. Elfman's and Young's efforts, IMO, are far superior and much more memorable to me. I might even go as far and say that I prefer Zimmer's effrot over Giacchino's. :shrug:

-Erik-

And the wallfisch, lorne etc sentimental contributions are medium-level synthy string pieces that slip your memory once they stop playing, so nothing to write home about either