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| Zimmer |
Inception: (Hans Zimmer/Lorne Balfe) Every director
seems to have one project of personal importance that he or she develops
throughout the majority of a career, refining to death such productions
until, if they ever do get the green light from a studio, they usually
end up in shambles. For director, writer, and producer Christopher
Nolan, that dream to become a reality is
Inception, the 2010
culmination of a decade of writing and pushing of the concept until
Warner Brothers finally allotted him $200 million to perfect his vision.
The idea behind
Inception is prime candy for science fiction
enthusiasts in love with temporal paradoxes and alternate realities,
following
The Matrix and
Dark City in terms of
establishing and tearing apart realities that aren't what we think they
are. In the plot, Leonardo DiCaprio is a skilled "extractor," a man who
can steal secrets from another person's subconscious and conducts his
corporate espionage while his targets are dreaming. His talent is not
only coveted, but it makes him an obvious target of his victims wrath,
and his only chance at resuming a normal life rests in an idea once
thought impossible: planting an idea rather than stealing one. While the
script alone is enough to twist one's mind, the production design of
Inception is arguably its most accomplished selling point. With
reality folding, exploding, and contorting in fantastic ways, the film
has always promised to be a visual treat, and early critical response
was overwhelming positive. Nolan had collaborated with composer David
Julyan prior to working with Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard for the
rebooted
Batman franchise, and Julyan's usual tendencies to
produce atmospheric haze would likely have served
Inception well.
Instead, it's no surprise that Zimmer's star power (and loyal
ghostwriter Lorne Balfe) ended up attached to the production; after all,
such high profile scores with a popular guest performer on electric
guitar can be marketed with live performances and signing events to
celebrate the opening of the film. This all happened with
Inception, of course, Zimmer's score transformed into a event for
salivating fanboys much like
The Dark Knight, a project after
which, if you recall, Zimmer erroneously claimed he would be retiring
from film music composition for a while. Like the popular 2008 score,
Inception's music has been the recipient of a fair amount of
teased press information, with an unconventional technique of scoring
the film promised in interviews meant to hype the production.
Unfortunately, like
The Dark Knight, no amount of
polished marketing, supposedly creative writing procedures, special
guest performers, and/or claims of transcendent music made by the
composer can help the score for
Inception avoid the inevitable
disappointment it dishes out to those listeners seeking something truly
fresh in film music, from Zimmer or otherwise. It's amazing to consider
how much hype Zimmer, his supporters, and his financial interests
generate for these "events" given how underdeveloped and boring the
resulting music can be. If the composer and these entities were
extending these delusions of grandeur in order to simply sell units at
record stores and iTunes, then it would make sense. But these people
seem to think that the music Zimmer provided for
Inception is
itself worth a parade, this while vastly superior compositions and
recordings for films in 2010 (such as Zimmer associates John Powell's
How to Train Your Dragon or Howard's
The Last Airbender)
slip by without any of the same mainstream recognition. This isn't to
say that Zimmer shouldn't have earned his paycheck for
Inception.
Indeed, he did, as evidenced by the effective match between the tone of
Nolan's concept and Zimmer's score. Why anybody would go orgasmic for
this kind of music, however, remains a good question. Zimmer's
methodology raised some eyebrows initially; he was refused by Nolan to
see the rough edits of the film and write music based on those. Instead,
the composer operated based on his impression of the characters in the
script, and he sent Nolan enough original library material to create a
functionally original temp score before the director allowed Zimmer to
coordinate the cues into final shape (to an extent not known) during
post-production. As such, you won't hear a score in
Inception
that was intentionally tailored by the composer to specific
synchronization points and other subtle shifts of emphasis on screen.
Instead, the music's final form was largely assigned by Nolan, a
circumstance that has drawn some criticism from film music fans who have
long been convinced that the director has little intelligent idea about
what he's doing when handling the soundtracks for his films.
Interestingly, Zimmer had originally expressed an interest in writing
the score as one of romance given that he viewed the concept as a love
story. Ultimately, however, an environment of atmospheric pseudo-noir
haze became the identity of his composition, the dull and vague memories
of dreams musically embodied in equally dreary tones and undefined
narrative parameters.
All you need to know about Zimmer's approach to
Inception came in the following quote from the composer at time
of its release: "I'm not interested in the massive heroic tunes anymore.
Now, I'm interested in how I can take two, three, or four notes and make
a really complex emotional structure. It's emotional as opposed to
sentimental. It's not bullshit heroic; it has dignity to it." Now,
Zimmer has been known to say some truly dumb things in the last few
years, sometimes denigrating the talents of his associates in the
industry by devaluing their style (by Zimmer's definition, Georges
Delerue's sentimental tone lacks refinement and grace!). It could be
easily argued that "bullshit heroic" music, an issue that Zimmer raised
when dismissing Danny Elfman's theme for the original
Batman as
"happy," is actually more difficult to perfect for a soundtrack than
what Zimmer has provided for
Inception. For instance, it takes
infinitely more talent for John Williams to craft a heroic theme that
doesn't come across as cheesy than it is for Vangelis to simply write
simplistic ideas in various unorthodox textures and force the film to
adapt to that sound. As discussed in reviews before, Zimmer is
neglecting to conform his compositional style to the needs of all of his
assignments, instead choosing to explore whatever his preferred
"dignified" approach is and then applaud his work as transcendent as an
excuse. Perhaps most intriguing about
Inception is the fact that
Nolan aided and encouraged this technique through his procedure of not
allowing Zimmer to see the film. It should be no surprise, considering
everything outlined thus far in this review, that what Zimmer wrote for
this film is
not a score for
Inception, but rather
a self-contained concert composition to promote the kind of music he
wishes to explore at this particular point in his career. It's no
different from what John Barry ended up doing in the 1990's. Barry
became a completely stubborn, one-dimensional composer in that decade,
buoyed by the prior success of his string-dominated romance sound. He
was eventually ineffective in his assignments because of his adherence
to a very narrow set of parameters in his music. With
Inception,
it's become increasingly clear that Zimmer could be defined as the
2010's version of what Barry was in the 1990's. Still popular, still
hired, but an artist of regurgitation and rigid perceptions. It's
amazing to think that Zimmer, who at one time could bounce from the
style of
A League of Their Own to
Point of No Return with
Cool Runnings in the middle, has become so limited that he risks
becoming the antithesis of a versatile composer like John Debney.
If you love the narrowly guided direction that Zimmer has
chosen to take with his blockbuster scores of the late 2000's (his
lesser assignments have thankfully been immune to his closed-mindedness
on the larger canvasses), you'll find much to appreciate in
Inception. If you've always admired the composer for innovating
in ways that inspire his army of Remote Control clones to emulate him,
then you may be disappointed by his lack of fresh ideas in the score. If
you've never cared for Zimmer's brooding, overly-processed sound of
late, then you'll consider the composer's work for
Inception to
be downright lazy. That's right: lazy. No matter where you fall in this
spectrum, everyone can pretty much agree that it's polarizing music. In
the film, few will protest, but on album, it's a love it or hate it
prospect. As mentioned before, the album presentation of
Inception may as well be considered as a standalone concert
composition. Its tone is extremely consistent, there is rarely
significant shifting of direction within the tracks, and each piece is
developed over long periods that allow for endless repetition and the
maintenance of atmosphere. In terms of its instrumental makeup,
Inception is truly a hybrid work. As Zimmer stated, "It's a very
electronic score. There is orchestra, but the electronics share an equal
spotlight, and I also have Johnny Marr [of Modest Mouse] playing guitar.
Besides Johnny and the orchestra, everything else stays virtual
throughout the mix." His comments about the electronics may be a bit
deceiving for some listeners. The score doesn't use sampled orchestral
sounds; in fact, the impression it leaves is based on the performances
of the string and brass performances throughout its length. What he
means is that it's an extremely processed score. If you thought his live
brass sounded like the sampled variety before, wait until you hear them
here. The bass region is enhanced as usual, joined by general meandering
tones in the treble that use their incongruous presence to convey
unease. Pulses and thumps in the bass join extremely low bass string
effects to establish a droning reminder of key in nearly every cue.
Zimmer borrows from Brad Fiedel's playbook to manipulate these sounds in
ways familiar to the first two
Terminator scores. Marr's electric
guitar often blends back into the soundscape, occasionally employed as
an ostinato tool rather than a performer of thematic parts. Backwards
edits are a cheap effect used by Zimmer for the addressing of alternate
realities; while the technique was fresh fifteen years ago, it's a
cheap, cheap, cheap tactic now. It's time for those sudden, warped ends
to cues to be shelved and replaced with something more innovative.
Thematically,
Inception isn't completely devoid
of substance. Its primary identity could be called the "dream theme," a
prototypical Zimmer idea of staccato rhythms over muscular,
ultra-harmonic whole notes for the brass section to pound out with
authority. The theme follows the standard "CheValiers de Sangreal"
format from
The Da Vinci Code (like most of the ideas in
Inception) in its generation of momentum and addition of layers.
You'll be hard pressed to recall this actual theme after the conclusion
of the album however, because it's more of a series of general ensemble
chords rather than a specifically developed melody. If anything, it'll
remind you of Craig Armstrong's more forceful contemporary themes,
especially with the chopping strings and hard-ass attitude. The major
performances of this theme occupy "Dream is Collapsing" and "Dream
Within a Dream," with a softer variation at the end of "Waiting for a
Train." It is reduced to slight strings in "Paradox," where is joined by
the score's other theme, dubbed, for lack of a better name, the "Quantum
theme." This title relates to the idea's similarity in posture and
progression to David Arnold's theme for the secret crime organization in
Quantum of Solace. Endless, foggy capitulations of the theme in
"Old Souls" are handed to more transparent guitar performances early in
"Waiting for a Train." Also heard in the score are a few lesser motifs,
including a subtle motif in "Time" that refers back to "Half Remembered
Dream." More obnoxiously, a pair of crushing brass hits tend to denote
gravity of truly planetary proportions. In this regard, Zimmer is guilty
of the same technique used so blatantly by Barry through the years:
repetition. He seems so obsessed with the grandiose sounds of these
blasts that he has to repeat each one twice just to make sure the
audience gets the point. But the comparison doesn't stop there; Zimmer
also repeats the pulses in the bass and the phrases within his themes
multiple times as well (sometimes for minutes at a time), a Barry
trademark that has a tendency to bore more often than impress. Like
Barry's music, the tempi are excruciatingly slow in
Inception.
It's no wonder Zimmer's aimless concert-like suites were so convenient
for Nolan to edit into the picture. In many ways, this is
the
ultimate library score. With just a couple of exceptions, the
subdued nature and lack of clear evolution in the score also pushes it
towards Michael Nyman territory, though the totally unrelated constructs
in several of them continue to point towards Vangelis' largely unfocused
works. Given modern technology, it's frightful to imagine that this
method of arrangement may represent the future of film music. If so, why
not put the four music editors on the movie poster instead of the
primary composer?
The attempts by the composer to add a noir-like element
to the score are largely ineffective (God forbid he do the unthinkable
and use a solo trumpet!), though you can hear where these portions
struggle to convey a romantic touch. Promising harmony on strings in
"One Simple Idea" is reprised in the midsection of "Waiting for a Train"
and additional string lines in "Time" faintly recall the famous "Journey
to the Line" cue from
The Thin Red Line. Outside of the thematic
statements and these subtle romantic hints,
Inception is
uninhibited, streamlined gloom. The only even remotely energetic cue is
"Mombasa," which suddenly explodes with outward electric guitar coolness
over irritating loops. Processed electronic descents in that cue (among
others) and incessant pounding on key are mind-numbing. Other individual
points of interest in the score include the abrupt, processed ends to
"528491" and "Time," a cheap technique as mentioned before. "Waiting for
a Train" unexpectedly layers non-English female lyrics from an old song
in the seventh minute. Octave hops late in "Paradox" are marginally
interesting. "Time" offers another "CheValiers de Sangreal" moment
without fail, though far more subdued in a quietly agonizing stupor.
Together, because of the way Zimmer constructed this score,
Inception has marginal narrative flow (at best). It cannot
compare to peers like Don Davis'
The Matrix or Trevor Jones'
Dark City in terms of flow or interest, the former far more
technically intelligent than Zimmer's effort and the latter preferable
in its ability to convey sonic brutality and a menacing tone while also
maintaining a generally harmonic, enjoyable stance. All of this said,
the music for
Inception is saturated with Zimmer's writing and
recording style, and with any reasonable success of the film, don't be
surprised if the composer receives attention from AMPAS members for it.
This music has been successfully branded as being "different" when in
fact it's simply Zimmer sitting firmly in his comfort zone and claiming
himself to be transcendent. For those not interested in subscribing to
his methodology,
Inception is a basically effective score in
context, acceptable but not exceptional. Its fifty minutes on CD album
will alternate between mundane and irritating, devoid of creativity.
Perhaps the man will one day cease making ridiculous statements about
the superiority of "emotional" music over "sentimental" music and will
again challenge himself to step into areas of music outside of those
comfort zones so that fans will hear his underlying talents (which any
collector of his early scores knows are sitting idle underneath the
disappointing material he churns out nowadays) shine once more. Until
then, one man's "dignified" music is another man's bore.
@Amazon.com: CD or
Download
- Music as Written for the Film: ***
- Music as Heard on Album: **
- Overall: **
| Bias Check: |
For Hans Zimmer reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.93
(in 98 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 2.96
(in 276,731 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert includes the expected note from the director about the
perceived greatness of this music.
