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FILMTRACKS.COM
PRINTER-FRIENDLY VIEW 
Review of Joker (Hildur Guðnadóttir)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you love wallowing in feelings of pity, loathing,
resentment, and misanthropy, Hildur Guðnadóttir's score effectively
reminding you just why you hate life and humanity.
Avoid it... if you demand that the topic of mental illness receive any semblance of musical sophistication from Guðnadóttir, who instead supplies obvious primordial reinforcement rather than intellectually creative tact.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Joker: (Hildur Guðnadóttir) For the same reason
that hate and divisiveness prevail in contemporary society and politics,
the 2019 movie Joker triumphed at the box office. A gruesomely
morbid and violent depiction of a DC Comics character origin, the film
was the first of its genre to show unrepentant violence in such a
graphic manner, revealing that audiences, regardless of lukewarm critical
consensus, seek more glory in malevolence and antipathy with each
passing year. The allure of the Joker character seems endless in a
society lacking in empathy and cultural awareness, the billion dollars
in grosses for Joker proving once again why cynicism, despair,
and authoritarian leaders like Donald J. Trump remain popular with an
increasingly angry and frustrated public. The point of the offensive
film, some would argue, is to show that austerity in government, and its
effect on social services like mental health assistance, is a detriment
to a functional society, allowing people like Arthur Fleck to fulfill a
terrible destiny that witnesses him become the classic Joker villain in
this story after copious amounts of blood is splattered everywhere. But
audiences don't get that. They become absorbed in and feel empowered by
the vengeful display of brutality against everyone they perceive as
being against them, even one's own family. You want to know why
resentment, bigotry, and self-pity and loathing have led to mass murders
across the planet? Look no further than entertainment like Joker,
which inevitably either spawns "incel" mindsets or reinforces them. The
execution of the film itself by Todd Phillips was attractively stylish
enough to enhance this inducement, and among the many praised production
elements of the movie is its score by Icelandic cellist and rising
composer Hildur Guðnadóttir. The young female artist has shot into the
spotlight with meteoric haste, her collaborations with the late
Jóhann Jóhannsson and her husband, English composer Sam
Slater, yielding the television film score Chernobyl and
Joker. Her music to this point in her career has been dominated
by sound design and cello mixtures, a brutal, minimalist approach that
gains attention by its mere unpleasantness, but it is not particularly
smart music. This trend continues and defines her work for
Joker.
There are obvious reasons why music like Guðnadóttir's Joker gains notoriety. It's oppressively simplistic and pervasive in the mix of the film, suggesting to some listeners that it has a "deeper" emotional connection with a character's psyche. In a primordial sense, that feeling might be true for the distraught, but it's also a cheap trick. For the same reason audiences can't identify and condemn the moral sickness of Joker as entertainment, the score is praised for ingenuity. And yet, it is guilty of the same glorification of stupidity and lack of subtlety. Granted, Guðnadóttir's film scores up to Joker were various shades of insufferable, her sense for droning only keeping her employed because of the aforementioned need for musical disillusionment in the industry at the moment. In that sense, ironically, Joker is actually a structural improvement for Guðnadóttir. You finally hear her devise and develop a theme and allow it minimally interesting development in orchestration over the course of the score. The work is monothematic and still experiences minimal variance in expression, however, the general tonality of the brooding atmosphere lulling you to a disturbed sleep if not for a handful of accelerated tempos and louder performances at times. The main theme is a series of two-note figures that is memorable in its execution but not its lyricism, the style of its performances remaining key to the score. Guðnadóttir simply agitates the theme at times when necessary for scenes in which the titular character incites riots and kills. In "Subway," "Escape From the Train," and, most notably, "Call Me Joker," the composer simply beefs up the depth of her sound design and orchestral backing for the cello, brass often tortured into sound effects duty. In fact, "Subway" uses the lovely malfunctioning equipment technique that makes you go to your window to determine if the awful industrial groaning and thumping noises are coming from obnoxious neighbors sawing wood. The theme only really shines in two cues, first in "Bathroom Dance," where the addition of choir and more complex harmonious chords produces better narrative sophistication, and in "Call Me Joker," when the sheer weight of an oversized brass section (minus trumpets, of course) finally and successfully cements the notion that violence is cool. In these final moments of the score, Guðnadóttir takes a page from Max Richter's more decisive music as she reaches catharsis. The narrative flow of Guðnadóttir's music for Joker is minimally effective because of these handful of more verbose expressions of the main theme, but the score is no less inspiring or pleasant in its closing bars than it was at its opening. Don't be fooled by the partial orchestra and choir applied here; the presence of these supporting elements is the highlight of the score, but their application is extremely sparse. A cue like "Defeated Clown" is left to the cello theme and a simple minor-third alternation on timpani. By "Following Sophie," the composer resorts to chopping away on that minor-third note repeatedly. The sound design either groans pointlessly, as in "Hiding in the Fridge," or simply replaces the timpani as a rhythm-setter, as in "Meeting Bruce Wayne." There are several cues that serve absolutely no purpose other than to fill a void with noise, as in "Looking for Answers" and "Learning How to Act Normal." Few actual explosions of dissonance exist in the score, ironically, with infrequent synchronization points accentuated. Guðnadóttir really stumbles when trying expand the emotional range of the work, "Young Penny," failing to translate any sense of attempted empathy on higher strings for an important scene. Slightly more effective is the up-tempo strings of "Penny Taken to the Hospital." She succeeds better at addressing the sexual frustration of the "incel" movement in "Arthur Comes to Sophie," however, showing where this score's true heart lies. On the whole, it's easy to see why this music swept all the major awards for 2019 and captured audiences with its unshakably somber tone. How can you not notice how depressing this score can be, both in context and on album? Its bonehead simplicity is its strength in many ways, but that doesn't make it particularly effective music. Composers throughout history have addressed mental instability in remarkably creative and thought-provoking ways. That doesn't mean that Guðnadóttir should have used a waltz for the character, as Danny Elfman did, or the shrieking, rising pitch of an electric guitar, as Hans Zimmer did. But the path she took is the least accomplished, playing to tired expectations rather than bravely defining them. Much of this failure owes to the wretched film, of course, and Joker avoids the lowest rating at Filmtracks because it at least matches the galling and abusive attitude of the picture and is an improvement over Guðnadóttir's previous works. But this music underachieves on screen, relying on obviousness rather than ingenuity, and it makes for a truly awful listening experience on its short, mind-numbing album. The world is better than this.
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 36:58
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert includes a list of performers but no extra information about the score or film.
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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from Joker are Copyright © 2019, WaterTower Music and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 8/2/20 (and not updated significantly since). |
