Actually, it’s “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” OK, Cheesy titles aside, this is another film directed by David Fincher and scored by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. The trio seem to be a recipe for success, because this is yet another award winning film with a really great soundtrack. As usual, you’ll hear no spoilers from me- I haven’t even seen the movie yet!
The soundtrack to this film is really unlike anything the other two films that the duo has worked on yet. While it is reminiscent of the soundtrack to “The Social Network,” it is much darker in tone and ends up being longer in duration.
While some of the songs aren’t as good as their past work, the sheer amount of music gives them plenty of chances to strike creative gold. This album comes out at being an impressive length of three whole hours, despite the movie only being about two and a half hours.
The reason for this may lay with how they approached creating the music. When it came to the soundtrack to “The Social Network,” what they thought would be temp music ended up being the final cut. But in an interview with Trent Reznor by The Film Stage, Reznor stated that since they were actively working with the creation of the film, everything kept moving around and scenes constantly changed in length. They ended up approaching it from a mindset of “everything is in flux, and approach it as such. Hopefully it’ll work out in the end.”
Photo: Musicians Atticus Ross on the left, Trent Reznor on the right. (thefilmstage.com)
Aesthetics
Similar to their approach with the “Gone Girl” soundtrack, Reznor said in an interview with NPR that they wanted to create uneasiness through their sound. They “take lots of acoustic instruments … and transplant them into a very inorganic setting, and dress the set around them with electronics.”
As a result, the music has an impressive amount of ranges. There are great droning songs with a passive approach to delivering a mood like “Aphelion”, and exhilarating and active songs like “A Thousand Details” or “An Itch.” There are even some covers of existing songs, like “Immigrant Song,” originally by Led Zeppelin. The sheer amount of tones and moods makes this great for listening while doing just about anything, in my experience.
Of course, there are some more bizarre songs that you might skip past, depending on your musical tastes. Some songs, like “Oraculum,” have unpleasant beginnings- intentionally, of course- so it doesn’t make for great listening all the time.
Photo: Trent Reznor left, Atticus Ross right. (Los Angeles Times)
The Verdict
Though the album does have a lot of great songs, and the length of the album makes it well suited for putting on as background music while doing other things, a number of the songs usually get skips when they come up. That’s not entirely a bad thing, either- they probably play with very unpleasant scenes to great effect!
While more experimental and half-filled with drone songs, this is another album that I tend to put on while working or driving. It’s not one of my absolute favorites, but it’s definitely up there. I suggest you give the full thing a listen, here. Some of my favorite songs from the score are “Infiltrator,” “Great Bird of Prey,” and those listed in aesthetics.
OK, that’s the last you’ll be hearing from these two, assuming they don’t have some secret project that pops up and releases before next week. Here’s a little preview of what I’ll be talking about on Wednesday.
Standing Soundtracks 