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Oscar Nominees 2015: Jóhannsson's The Theory of Everything


Ludwig

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Part 3 of my series of analyses on the Oscar nominees for Best Score:

http://www.filmmusicnotes.com/oscar-nominees-2015-best-original-score-part-3-of-6-johann-johannssons-the-theory-of-everything/

Subdued though it may be, it strikes a highly emotional chord. Enjoy!

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It's not a bad score by any means. Although, as I said before, it's the kind of thing Desplat and Korzeniowski write on daily basis and never win any awards for.

Karol

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Nice article again Ludwig.

And I agree Karol, it's not a bad score. But it rarely has anything original to say. Everything it does has been done in a superior fashion by others (Desplat, Korzeniowski, etc). It's a "safe" and serviceable score, but I'm not sure it's worthy of the heaps of praise it's been getting.

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Right, though I haven't heard some of those.

And Atonement is a great score which I wouldn't group with the likes of ToE. It was quite deserving the Oscar, at least among its fellow nominees.

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Of course, you are all correct in saying that, taken per se, the music for ToE is good not great, nothing particularly special, etc. I imply as much in the post when I call it generic music. But I think we do a disservice to film music when we wrench it away from the film and evaluate it on its own as though that is the yardstick by which to measure a film score's worth. The same old suit can be made to look dashing on a subject in the hands of a great tailor. And this is what I feel Johannsson does with ToE. To me, it's an added bonus if the score has value outside of the film, not a requisite of worthiness. The music, for example, in the scene where Stephen tries to climb the stairs for the last time is certainly not groundbreaking or even all that original in its materials. But it is extremely fine-tuned to the emotional nuances of the scene in a way that most modern sound-designy scores are not. That's why I'd say it's worth the praise it's been getting.

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