Album a Day (Film Score Edition): Hans Zimmer - Inception

Hans Zimmer
Reprise
(2010)

Regardless of how you may or may not feel about Christopher Nolan's Inception, there is absolutely no denying the brilliance of Hans Zimmer's score. Now, I personally loved Inception as I happen to think that if this is the (at least immediate) future of big-budget action films then we are on the right track, but to me a great score not only helps enhance the film but can also function as its own separate entity, as if the two were companion pieces (though I can't imagine watching this film without the score). This is the type of film that has very large grand ideas and then very small intimate moments. I mean consider the fact that the vast majority of the film takes place inside of the human mind. There is an incredible depth to the brain, and especially dreams that we have only begun to understand but have been constantly fascinated with since as far back as possible. Dreams are our safe havens and yet they can be dangerous at the same time. Its where we have adventures, love affairs, self-loathing, self-aggrandizing, etc. In other words, this soundtrack isn't just for a film that has to deal with all of that but also a soundtrack that must have its own psychology to it.

One of the great things about the CD copy of the album is a story in the liner notes where Director Christopher Nolan details the process of working with Zimmer on a film that he described as being so intrinsically interwoven with its score. Of course Zimmer has worked on over 100 soundtracks and if you run down the list its a veritable "who's who" of major American Motion Pictures. Few reach that upper tier of film composers and so obviously takes a certain something. This especially holds true when you are working with a master of scale like Christopher Nolan, though this is not the first collaboration between the two with Zimmer being the creative force behind Nolan's acclaimed Batman series (Batman Begins and The Dark Knight). The end result is that Zimmer (who has every right at this point to basically phone it in) continues to challenge himself, do research, and perfect his musical cues.

Of course the most noticeable cue on soundtrack is the very industrial mechanical droning horn. This almost always serves as a reminder that something wrong is happening in the dream world, whether it be the Projections becoming aware of intruders or the world itself collapsing. But beyond that there are also great small moments. Although this is a very electronic soundtrack its difficult to put all of the music into one genre. To me this has to be another call back to the film and its own concept of playing with genre. When I first walked out of Inception I said, "This is Ocean's Eleven meets The Matrix", which I still stand by, however as time has gone on I can see that beyond heist film and sci-fi there are also strong elements of classic action, espionage, and film noir that are often represented by different characters and each of those characters stronger moments are easily displayed all over Zimmer's soundtrack. I think the most significant one has to be Leonardo DiCaprio's character Dominic Cobb who displays all the traits of a classic noir character reminiscent of Fred MacMurray's Walter Neff in Double Indemnity and so many of Cobb's scene involving his lost lady love, Mallorie (played so perfectly by Marion Cotillard), you get very heavily noir music, like in her first appearance with the track "Dream Is Collapsing". A good counter example of that would be somebody like Tom Hardy's character Eames (the Forger) who is much more of an espionage guy and we get music like "Dream With a Dream".

What continues to impress me about Zimmer is how open he is to the collaborative process, which I'm sure working with a collaborative director like Nolan only encourages, and one of the really happy results of that is that on this soundtrack Zimmer brought in musician Johnny Marr (The Smiths, Modest Mouse, The Cribs) to play guitar. Typically film composers of Zimmer's caliber tend to use more classically trained musicians and so even though Marr was already an accomplished musician, I still find it refreshing for Zimmer to have the taste-level to bring in someone like Marr that in addition to being an excellent musician, also isn't going to be afraid to speak his mind which again lends to the collaborative process.

In addition to the regular soundtrack available in stores you can download two free tracks ("Projections" and "Don't Think About Elephants") from the film's website and on itunes you can purchase a Junkie XL remix of a song titled "Inception" that obviously takes from various parts of the score (and is probably an indication that there will be more remixes in the future as was the case with the Dark Knight Soundtrack). I think the Junkie XL remix is a really solid track that probably isn't as good as Zimmer's score but adds for a cool twist that has club appeal to it and I think the crossover, much like enlisting Johnny Marr, can only pull in more of an audience for one of my favorite soundtracks of the year (and perhaps period).

Favorite Tracks: Half Remembered Dream, Dream Is Collapsing, 528491, Mombasa, Paradox, Time, Don't Think About Elephants, and Inception (Junkie XL Remix)