Hans Zimmer Says ‘Inception’ Was The Most Difficult Movie to Score

Hans Zimmer, the composer behind works of art like the music for Interstellar, The Lion King and Dune, believes that one of his contributions to Christopher Nolan’s filmography is his most challenging. We’re talking about his very complicated score for Inception, in which he “manipulated the very fabric of time.”

Time is an essential concept for Nolan’s groundbreaking heist thriller starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. In the film, a gang of high-end criminals gets hired for the ultimate hit: in the near future, humans are able to infiltrate the subconscious and navigate dreams. These criminals are able to extract information that their victims don’t want to reveal. But what happens when a request forces them to actually implant an idea deep into the subconscious of a very powerful man?

Well, that’s not all that happens in Christopher Nolan’s Inception. It sounds glamorous, and Nolan’s visuals will convince you of this. The problem is that the group faces something more challenging when they have to go deeper into different levels of dreams by infiltrating dreams within dreams. Can you imagine what happens when the mind starts to believe the dream world is the real one?

Zimmer managed to provide a sonic backdrop that made sense in an already complicated film. The iconic brass fanfare often heard in the film is not a random selection of a couple of notes. It’s actually the slowed-down introduction of Édith Piaf’s “Non, je ne regrette rien,” which is heavily featured in the movie as the “kick” characters need to wake up. This is Zimmer’s answer to Vulture’s question of what his “most technically innovative score”:

“Inception because I managed to go and f*ck with the very fabric of time. There’s a point where three things are going on. It’s like trains crossing, all at different tempos, but then they all meet and they’re all harmonizing with one another and then float away into their own little worlds again.”

The score for Inception became one of the many hailed elements of Nolan’s sci-fi thriller. Zimmer was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on the film, but unfortunately, he lost to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, who won for their work on The Social Network. Nevertheless, Zimmer usually plays the Inception score in his live concerts, proving it’s definitely one of his favorite works.

Hans Zimmer’s Work With Christopher Nolan Goes Beyond Collaboration

Zimmer began working on Nolan’s films with Batman Begins. He would eventually come back for The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises. The composer’s work in Dunkirk is also an impressive musical backdrop to the war film. But Zimmer has confirmed that his favorite score for a Nolan film is Interstellar. This is what he said to Vulture when they asked what his favorite score in the Nolan-verse was:

“Interstellar, just because of how it started. Chris sent me a letter and said to write whatever came to me. He wouldn’t tell me what the movie was, but he wrote me this fable. It arrived on thick paper, and I know it was typed with his father’s typewriter. It was really about what it means to become a father, how you always look at yourself from then on through your children’s eyes. He knows my son Jake very well, so I thought that’s what he was writing about.

So I basically wrote a love theme to my son. I finished around ten at night. I phoned Chris’s house, and his wife and producing partner, Emma, answered. She said, ‘Chris is pacing around. He’s really antsy. Do you mind if he comes down to hear it?’ He came down and sat on my couch. I never look at somebody when I play him something for the first time. It’s too scary. I played him this small, fragile piece, and I said, ‘Well, what do you think?’ He said, ‘I suppose I better make the movie now,’ and I’m going, ‘What is the movie?’ And he started to talk about space and ginormous journeys and the end of the world and all that stuff.”

Release Date

July 16, 2010

Runtime

148 minutes

Cast

Leonardo DiCaprio
, Joseph Gordon-Levitt
, Elliot Page
, Tom Hardy
, Ken Watanabe
, Dileep Rao
, Cillian Murphy
, Tom Berenger
, Marion Cotillard
, Pete Postlethwaite
, Michael Caine
, Lukas Haas
, Tai-Li Lee
, Claire Geare
, Magnus Nolan
, Taylor Geare
, Johnathan Geare
, Tohoru Masamune
, Yuji Okumoto
, Earl Cameron
, Ryan Hayward
, Miranda Nolan
, Russ Fega
, Tim Kelleher

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