Hans Zimmer's Spooky Grandeur: "Inception"

 

Inception, the movie that makes this Summer almost worth living through -- almost -- has many cool things going on for it. Christoper Nolan's intoxicating love for cinema -- his characters always dream mashed-up film frames, from 2001 to Shining to La Jetée to silly James Bond movies; the little cruel visual jokes -- all reality is eventually unreliable because cinema is always more real anyway; the fact that Nolan is probably the only man in Hollywood, with the exception of Gore Vidal, who's read Calvino, and gawd bless him for it; Leonardo DiCaprio's successful attempts at hiding his double chin (we still <3 you Leo).

But one of the things that fascinated Opera Chic the most was the spooky grandeur of Hans Zimmer's score.

Maestro Zimmer just spoke to the Los Angeles Times: and while in the process of singing an ode to, well, Johnny Marr (forgive Zimmer, he's old), he makes quite a few interesting points:

"Instrumentalists aren’t interchangeable," Zimmer continued. "I’m thinking about Jacqueline du Pre playing Elgar Cello Concerto. There are many great performances, but her performance it that performance. I said to Chris, ‘What about Johnny Marr?’ I was going to ditch it if it wasn’t going to be Johnny."

The fact that Zimmer and Nolan had the balls to recycle "Non, je ne regrette rien" -- quite probably the most lamely overused cliché in the history of music -- as a key plot element and the movie's loopy, bizarre version of the song actually works -- well, it just makes one grateful for the fact that Nolan didn't go into investment banking and chose film directing instead.

Comments

[Kevin Edmund Youkilis 4MVP]

I was prepared to hate it, it really seemed like a hal-baked "Matrix", but in the end I really liked it, the performances are good and even if you find it soulless it looks like a good videogame...

[JHC]

The score excerpt that accompanied the trailer persuaded me to see the movie. Something very powerful and creepy about that orchestration as the buildings are crumbling into the sea. But then I didn't hear that music in the film proper, or at least I wasn't aware of it.

[Bill Philin-Ploplis]

Whoa! That was one long crescendo. Couldn't hear the solo singer, and once again we have added to the stereotype of the Asian woman: plays-stringed instruments in long melismas. Not the kind of music I find reassuring, but I am sure appropriate for this film's images.

[Ysabel]

Johnny Marr IS a genius, but if he didn't help write the score there's no reason they couldn't have hired someone else to play the jangly bits on a guitar. Anyway, it's nice to see that he's still getting employed; not that he needs it.