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FILMTRACKS.COM
PRINTER-FRIENDLY VIEW 
Review of Oppenheimer (Ludwig Göransson)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if demeanor trumps narrative in your experience with
scores of contemplative battles of atonality, Ludwig Göransson
offering intelligent but largely ambient string and synthesizer tones
for a troubled atmosphere.
Avoid it... if you expect to be taken on a journey with this music, its themes too intentionally obscured to be effective at representing the foreshadowing, achievement, and consequences of the story.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Oppenheimer: (Ludwig Göransson) Destroyer of
worlds or otherwise, American physicist and atomic bomb creator J.
Robert Oppenheimer didn't enjoy the most pleasant of lives. Some would
argue that consorting with communists was as self-punishing as his work
on the Manhattan Project building the first nuclear bombs. Writer and
director Christopher Nolan managed to take the man's relatively
unexciting life and translate it into a thrilling 2023 biopic,
Oppenheimer, examining several different portions of that life
before and after the fateful invention. With heaps of critical praise
and box office success, the film spans the 1920's to the 1960's, using
practical effects instead of digital ones as much as possible during its
philosophical examination of nuclear fission. It's the kind of film that
major actors take pay cuts to appear in, the ensemble cast of
Oppenheimer impressive and balancing Nolan's vivid, fiery imagery
to achieve a dramatic powerhouse of awards bait. A certain amount of
cerebral tolerance is necessary for most Nolan films, and that
mindedness carries over to the music in his projects. Long enjoying a
successful collaboration with Hans Zimmer, Nolan has turned on
Tenet and Oppenheimer to industry darling Ludwig
Göransson, who has provided the director with music not too
dissimilar in attitude and structure to what Zimmer might have created
instead. The basic techniques of scoring these films remains the same
for Göransson, who composed and recorded much of this work before
filming so it could be used as a temp track. As Zimmer tends to do,
Göransson wrote this score conceptually, allowing Nolan and his
editor to throw pieces of the music at whatever scenes they deemed
appropriate. Not surprisingly, listeners receive a score that is
adequate, if not impressive, in its demeanor but absolutely devoid of
any narrative development you'd normally hear for such an occasion. It's
another situation in which style and inflection win the day despite the
loss of the music as a tool of foreshadowing, achievement, and
consequences in its thematic handling. It is thus music to be absorbed
rather than relied upon to tell a story.
One area in which Göransson succeeds brilliantly with Oppenheimer is in the hype machine involving the press. He must have taken Zimmer's masterclass on the practice, because the number of articles generating positive buzz about this score is innumerous. They also overplay the originality of the music; film music collectors are certainly aware of the general rule that the more a composer talks up the process of creating a score, the more likely it ends up sounding rather conventional. And such is the case with Oppenheimer once again. For all the words expended about Göransson's creation process here, the end result is somewhat impressive overall but nothing atypical when considering that some combination of Max Richter, Clint Mansell, Abel Korzeniowski, Jonny Greenwood, and Justin Hurwitz could have yielded a similar result. More meaningful was Nolan's normal, initial guidance to the composer and arguable over-reliance upon the music in the final mix. Countless hours of music generated by Göransson were whittled down to two and half hours for placement in the film, and the excess of such placements, especially in their potential tendency to distract during conversational scenes, became an issue for some viewers. Nolan also wanted the composer to utilize a violin as a representation of the titular character, the instrument to be adapted as necessary to musically capture the man's neurotic behavior. A 70-member orchestra is largely devoid of woodwinds and prominent percussion, the entire package likely remembered for its interplay between strings and synthesizers with brass in a supporting role. Göransson utilizes strings, harp, and piano for the character development in the first third, the attitude very introverted and understated in these early passages. The vintage synthetics represent later darkness and repercussions of Oppenheimer's work, a distinct shift altering the score's tone in "Manhattan Project" for increased dissonance and urgency. There is percussion at play, but not as you would expect. Foot stomps and ticking effects are impactful but rare, emerging in "Atmospheric Ignition" in stark colors. Brass offer some muscular diversions at moments of particular gravity, even down to the unison blasting techniques Zimmer is so fond of. These instrumental players for Oppenheimer are often applied in pulsation formations encouraged to sonically represent Nolan's painstaking atomic visual effects. The rhythms never become intoxicating or enticingly prolonged in a Phillip Glass sense, but their varying propulsion keeps the score interesting. The composer is proud of the significant use of changing tempos within individual cues, including the 21 alterations of pace within "Can You Hear the Music" alone that took a reported three days to record. (This claim is rather odd given that the whole score was supposedly recorded in five days.) The balance between tonal accessibility for the drama of the characters and the dissonance of the terrifying ramifications of the nuclear fission (and arguably the communist connections) is really well handled by Göransson in this score. He manages to create tension without outright annoyance, never truly losing the neo-classical touch inherent in the strings despite the increasing placement of the synthesizers at the forefront. Their balance is very nicely achieved and makes for an immersive listening experience at times on album. His mix is often compelling, the use of solo strings or quartets not as dry and imposingly sterile as you hear in equivalent works. The synthesizers are actually surprisingly expansive in the soundscape, providing a slight fantasy element as necessary for the fission's implications. Still, the end result of the composer's approach diminishes the clarity of his thematic constructs. Despite the existence of several recurring ideas, there is no obvious narrative development throughout, the themes never guiding the story to the extent needed to be succeed at their task. Instead, they simply waft in and out, often overwhelmed by surrounding activity, which Göransson confesses was intentional. Though these core ideas do have some merit in concept, their usage in the score is thus so diffused in various guises that they cease to serve the narrative any more than the basic style of the performance would supply on its own. The main theme is present throughout the score but doesn't have the appreciable impact it needs for the character, even at the end. Rather, the sudden cutoff to "Oppenheimer" is an obnoxious way to conclude the album, a rather cheap technique betraying the intelligence of what preceded it. For most listeners, Oppenheimer will seem either themeless or monothematic, Göransson's main identity for Oppenheimer himself rather elusive in how it's often buried in other activity. It's a structure of descending pairs, six notes overall with significant alterations around it. Developing on harp early in "Fission," this idea is a bit better teased at 4:40 on strings. The theme is highlighted starting at 0:42 into "Can You Hear the Music" in accelerating, rhythmic form. Only tentative chords remain at 0:16 into "A Lowly Shoe Salesman," though the theme returns on a warmer string section in the latter half of the cue. The descending pairs waft through "Quantum Mechanics" under meandering violin lines, similar techniques slowed for the more ambient "Gravity Swallows Light." The theme offers some tonal determination to the middle of "Manhattan Project" and swells to a ballsy synthetic prominence at 1:22 into "American Prometheus" before diminishing to solo violin over wind-like ambience. Its chords are barely evident in slight tension during "Los Alamos," and the descending figures become elongated in phrasing at the outset of "Fusion" on harp over chopping cellos. Oppenheimer's theme opens "Colonel Pash" solemnly and guides the dissonance later in the cue, though it consolidates into a more determined and accessible rendition at 3:18. After being distorted at the outset of "Theorists" on synthesizers, the theme struggles on piano against the synthetic, percussive bomb-oriented material late in "Ground Zero," extends in phrasing with brass early in "Trinity," and returns amongst churning angst in the middle of "Power Stays in the Shadows." It accelerates into a nervous, prickly, synthetic motif at the start of "The Trial" but is countered by a dramatic, full version on strings in the middle of "Kitty Comes to Testify." In a somewhat tepid wrapping of the score, the main theme reprises its pensive mode on violin at 0:47 into "Destroyer of Worlds," though it's overwhelmed by synthetics with ominous force, and is attempted again at 0:14 into "Oppenheimer" on lower violin shades, where it is also usurped by synthetics. Not unexpectedly given the plot, there is practically no closure to this theme. Of more interest, though, is Göransson's choice to very rarely afford any sympathy to it, either, producing a rather cold and clinical musical personality for the character. If listeners have difficulty determining the outlines of Göransson's main theme for the titular character in Oppenheimer, then the constructs of the other motifs in the score may be even more obtuse. The composer's handling of Oppenheimer's wife, Kitty, is less than appealing but does offer some more hopeful tonalities at times. Ascending phrasing defines this more meandering identity, which debuts fully at 1:10 into "Meeting Kitty" on cello and builds with synthetics into a bubbly romantic piece before devolving into grating rhythmic blurting at the cue's end. Echoes of this material carry over to "Groves" with slight optimism, and they are faintly skittish on strings in "Dr. Hill" and sparse on piano early in "Kitty Comes to Testify." As this theme dissolves over the course of the picture, few will even notice. A bit more successful is Göransson's musical representation of the darker forces in the score, if only because of the contrast that their brass and synthetic renderings provide. This "consequences motif" uses rising minor pairs from key that are introduced in the middle of "Fusion." The idea shifts to a different progression as a rhythm on brass in "Colonel Pash" and is elongated in the second half rhythms of "Theorists." This material devolves into a quietly thumping rhythm of menace in "Ground Zero" and drives piano and synth movements late in "Trinity." It transforms into a longer line with evocative and pensive character in "What We Have Done" and generates an uneasy rhythm on cello in "Something More Important." The composer seemed intent to avoid writing outright horror or action music for the most frightening scenes in the film, Nolan perhaps opting early for silence as an appropriate conclusion to the building suspense of certain scenes. That strategy is effective and helps keep the overall score for Oppenheimer largely consistent from start to end. While there is a fair amount of dissonance in the second and third acts, Göransson keeps the sound of his recording palatable as a background listening experience on album. On the other hand, the lengthy, 94-minute presentation offers few tonally engaging highlights, from which perhaps ten to fifteen minutes of outwardly positive music could be assembled. The long running time of the album isn't necessary a detriment here because this kind of music relies upon its ambient mood rather than a narrative hindered by slow portions of underscore. The end result remains consistently interesting and rarely disturbing, but it takes you on no journey in and of itself. ***
TRACK LISTINGS:
All Albums:
Total Time: 94:42
NOTES & QUOTES:
There exists no official packaging for the digital Back Lot Music album.
The Mondo Music 2-CD set is housed in a 6-panel digipak with an expanded booklet
containing notes about the score.
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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 Oppenheimer are Copyright © 2023, Back Lot Music (Digital), Mondo Music (CD) and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 7/31/23 (and not updated significantly since). |
