Film scoring has been gaining more significance over the decades, and continuously changing due to the impact of new musical styles, practices, and advancements in technology.
Film music originated as an entirely separate specialty within the silent movie era. Soon enough, the very first acclaimed score composers such as Max Steiner or Enrich Korngold stepped up to write music exclusively for films, adhering to each film’s unique structure and themes.
Fast forward to the sixties when films started featuring licensed songs by popular artists and bands as well as a larger variety of genres such as jazz, blues, folk, and oriental music. Finally, the takeover of synths in the 70s and the rise of digital sampling and sequencing technologies in the 80s marked the beginning of a whole new era in film music which changed scoring forever.
In the 21st century, not only film scoring is a constituent part of cinema but it also acts as an autonomous piece of art. People are buying movie soundtracks and relishing them as an independent source of music. Movie scores nowadays are so impactful that you don’t need to rewatch your favorite movie to relive the catharsis of it. Listening to its original score album can be just as powerful when it comes to the sensations the movie once evoked.
What makes a film score stand out nowadays? There’s no correct answer, however, the soundtrack’s capacity to amplify the artistic value of the movie in addition to originality and structure, play an important role in the film’s success.
Check out our top 10 picks of the most striking movie soundtracks of the 21st century and you’ll see what we mean.
The Social Network
The brilliant production and storytelling behind The Social Network are just partly responsible for the shivers that run down your spine whenever you’re watching this movie. Dark ambient music laced with industrial, synthetic electronica, pierced by shrieking guitars and momentarily replaced by tranquil moments of melancholic piano music defines the signature style of the Trent Reznor – the member of an acclaimed rock band Nine Inch Nails – and Atticus Ross duo. For a biographical drama about the twisted genius of the Facebook creator, you could hardly find a more fitting score.
La La Land
How can anyone ignore the movie score when it comes to musicals? La La Land is one of the brightest examples of the modern musical, especially when the musical genre is considered by many a thing of the past. Music by Justin Hurwitz is the backbone of La La Land and one of the main reasons it received multiple awards and immense critical acclaim. In the musical whose central themes are love and chasing your dreams, the score is charged with an important task: to convey the sentiment that words simply can’t.
Traversing between soft, flirtatious, elevating and melancholic shades of jazz, the La La Land score ties together and enhances every emotion of romance, confusion, hope and determination.
The Revenant
It’s not surprising that a movie of such profound emotional depth called for mastery of even three virtuoso artists: Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, German electronic producer Alva Noto, and instrumentalist Bryce Dessner. Going hand in hand with pure cinematic excellence of director Alejandro González Iñárritu, the collaborative effort of the artists elevated the film to the heights of emotional intensity.
The main themes of The Revenant; life, death, revenge and survival, are channeled through extremely delicate, atmospheric and oppressing string orchestra. Illustrating a cold and clear wintry setting of the movie, both beautiful and dark.
Amélie
Amélie didn’t gain its status as a cult movie just for depicting the ever-trendy Paris life or telling the modern fairy-tale story about a whimsical, genuine protagonist. Everyone will agree that music by Yann Tiersen played a major role in the film’s worldwide success. Following the tradition of French musette genre, Tiersen’s music is anything but complex. Based solely on accordion and piano, and just occasionally laced with vibraphone, banjo or harpsichord, Amélie’s score is unpretentious and mellow, at times melancholic or quirky – much like Amélie herself. Not to mention memorable to the bone!
We think it’s safe to say that this movie might be the ultimate cinematic example showing that beauty lies in simplicity.
Her
One may think that a futuristic science-fiction drama calls for a synth-driven soundtrack. Perhaps we’re used to that since sci-fi movies have traditionally been scored with either classical, electronic or ambient synth music. Well, not anymore: it’s time to welcome indie rock bands as equals to professional film composers. Her is a 2013 romantic sci-fi drama about a man who develops feelings for an artificially intelligent virtual assistant based on a female’s personality and voice. The film’s score was composed by an acclaimed band Arcade Fire. Resembling the sound of a contemporary orchestra – comprising soft guitar phrases, storytelling piano, and strings with episodic futuristic synth segments – the score brilliantly communicates the subtle, extraordinary nature of the relationship between a person and computer program.
Under the Skin
It’s really hard to think of a more unsettling and disturbing score of the last decade than Mica Levi’s raw sonic terror in the 2013 sci-fi film Under the Skin. The film is about an alien creature disguised as a luscious female who lures men into the trap of a black void. Although the movie itself is rather eerie, you could barely get any bizarre sensations if you watched it with the sound off. Owing to Mica Levi’s outstanding flair for experimenting with sounds, Under the Skin is the kind of movie you watch not only with your eyes but with every sense. The main motif of dissonant, microtonal strings with ever-changing pitch and slowed tempo arouses exceedingly bizarre sensations, emerging somewhere between the corporeal, animalistic sexuality and visceral horror.
Inception
Probably most of us have felt an odd cathartic feeling while watching Inception. Taking into account that it’s a science-fiction film about corporate espionage, filmed in a dozen different locations all over the world and, and featuring hundreds of visual effects, it makes perfect sense that Hans Zimmer – a notable German film score composer – was entrusted with the task to write the music for Inception.
Dominated by a powerful and emotional orchestra with a modern twist of guitar (played by Johnny Marr, the former guitarist of the band The Smiths), the movie’s score may be exactly the reason why such overpowering sensations fill the viewers every time they relish the acclaimed picture as the magnitude of the orchestra marvelously mirrors the vastness of subconscious human mind.
Only Lovers Left Alive
Probably not the most well-known out of all Jim Jarmush’s movies, but his marvelously aesthetic movie Only Lovers Left Alive is considered an epitome of indie-films. Jim Jarmusch fans are aware of the director’s knack for music. So, for those who don’t know, the score for the movie about an eccentric vampire couple was composed by nothing else but Jarmusch’s own band – SQÜRL and Dutch lute player Jozef van Wissem. Film’s soundtrack is comprised of gloomy, somewhat dirty and distorted instrumental rock songs – something that sounds particularly right in the deep darkness of night. The main characters in Only Lovers Left Alive are the very last living vampires, disgusted by a dull modern society. This theme is ingeniously conveyed by the edgy and raw film’s score, infused with the medieval, spellbinding sound of lute.
Drive
2011 neon-noir drama Drive is one of the most visually and musically stimulating films of the 21st century. It’s rare for a movie to balance so many different elements and themes – romance, gore, violence, humanism, car-chase, stunts – and it’s even rarer to find the music that could properly complement them. Drive skillfully fuses 80s nostalgia with the intensity of contemporary cinema while also maintaining the high aesthetic value of the movie. It’s no coincidence that for a film based on the neon retro aesthetics, the creators relied on synth-heavy music varying from dreamy, clean and stylish tunes to ominous synth arpeggios, composed by Cliff Martinez and including tracks by electronic synth-pop bands Chromatics and Desire.
Interstellar
Interstellar is one of the most praised sci-fi films of the 21st century and rightfully so. Magnificent both in production and in its essence, Interstellar tells a story about a father who has to leave his daughter on the perishing Earth in order to complete an important mission: to find a new home for humanity. It’s definitely not your typical sci-fi movie, while some could argue, it’s more of an emotional drama rather than a fantastical cosmic odyssey. The film’s score is another masterpiece by the aforementioned score composer Hans Zimmer. The music in Interstellar is comprised of majestic and profound classical and ambient pieces featuring strings orchestra, piano, and especially the powerful pipe organ. Ever-pulsing and growing, the Interstellar score is as immense as the outer space itself; and as warming as the internal emotional bond between a father and a daughter.
