Jóhann Jóhannsson: One Year Gone

Jóhann Jóhannsson passed away one year ago in February. A famed Icelandic composer, Jóhannsson was best known for his multiple collaborations with Denis Villeneuve on Prisoners, Sicario, and Arrival. His musical signature consisted of mixing traditional elements with new and innovative sounds. He was like a chameleon that completely adapted his style to his projects unlike some composers whose work you can generally recognize across the board. His compositions managed to be experimental without being off-putting or irregular, and I think his greatest strength was identifying exactly what a film needed and fulfilling that need without ever becoming generic.

His first collaboration with Villeneuve on Prisoners resulted in a sweeping melancholic soundtrack dominated by slow atmospheric tracks that were instantly transportive. The music itself felt cold and threatening in tracks like The Keeper, yet rose into personal and somber dirges in tracks like The Candlelight Vigil. The music of Prisoners provides the backbone of tone for the film and serves as a constant mood anchor, never getting ahead of itself with flashy or quick compositions. Jóhannsson cements us firmly in this cold and threatening headspace yet never loses the humanity that remains at the core of everything. The music takes on the personality of the characters in the overwhelming feelings of being lost, angry, and heartbroken right up until the climax when the dirge slowly takes on new life and we feel something new for the first time in the film – hope. Scene in question.

Proving his versatility as a composer, Jóhannsson worked on The Theory of Everything after Prisoners which serve almost as foils for how opposite they are. The compositions on The Theory of Everything are dominated by lighter instruments like violins, flutes, harps, and tinkering pianos. They are quicker and more fanciful, taking on a period attitude and are noticeably English in nature. Tracks like Cambridge, 1963 sound almost weightless and effortless as if they were dancing spontaneously into existence. The soundtrack carries this light exuberance that contains the feelings of discovery, first love, and determination that the film is occupied with. Even the more downtrodden tracks dealing with Stephen’s condition like The Spelling Board aren’t without their hints of strength and resilience, never succumbing to hopelessness. The soundtrack is made up of many short songs, most being around two minutes or under, but each feels completely unique. The title track, The Theory of Everything, seems to capture it all in only a minute. It’s both parts nostalgic and uplifting and feels completely layered in a variety of emotions that combine into one beautiful thing.

Jóhannsson’s second collaboration with Villeneuve on Sicario was a new beast altogether. The slow dirges and cold ominous tones of Prisoners were traded out with oppressive drum-heavy tracks that sat deep in the pit of your stomach somewhere between apprehension and dread. Who could forget The Beast with its falling cellos and distorted drums that built into an overwhelming cacophony of anxiety? Jon Ekstrand certainly didn’t forget it. The distorted drums became a ballad of hair-raising tension that engulfed you entirely, mirroring how our protagonist was thrust head over heels into this new world. And yet at the same time, Sicario could take a step back and deliver soul-stirring tracks filled with loss and tragedy like the cello oriented Desert Music, an elegy for the innocent souls impacted by cruel forces outside their control. We were given a musical portrait of Benicio Del Toro’s character in the form of Alejandro’s Song, an ominous lament that wails the sound of pain derived from grief. It's haunting and unsettling and defines Alejandro as a phantom driven solely by the pain of the past.

The soundtrack Jóhannsson did for Arrival is truly special in that it’s the perfect marriage between being alien and human. For a film about bridging gaps through language and communication, the soundtrack perfectly delivers on Jóhannsson’s signature style of being new and traditional at the same time which compliments the themes of the film. The soundtrack wavers somewwhere in the middle between these two worlds. In some tracks, the two worlds collide into something beautiful. Heptapod B and Kangaru are two wonderful examples of this bridge between known and unknown. They’re unusual tracks with a melody built of human voices that don’t speak recognizable words or ideas, but instead communicate through feelings. The voices themselves sound strange, almost non-human, but the tracks never sound threatening or ominous. They’re both curious and hopeful. First Encounter is a track that builds and swells with the unknown. Its presence in the film is overwhelming as it fluctuates between moments of eery quiet and loud crescendos as our characters take their first steps into this alien place. It perfectly communicates the anxiety of the unknown. The entire soundtrack is filled with strange snyths, modulated voices, and alien sounds, but it all sits on a bed of the familiar to keep it grounded to us as listeners and allows us to keep that human emotional connection throughout.

Mandy was unfortunately released posthumously last year and the score was declared ineligible for an Academy Awards nomination, a slight sour note attached to one of Jóhannsson's greatest works. Jóhannsson’s work on Mandy is his most transportive, his most atmospheric, and his most otherworldly. It’s a wonderful soundtrack awash in a sea of ethereal synths that also descend into a hellish and surreal soundscape. The film is completely wrapped in the score like a blanket. It’s the perfect marriage of sound and music to Cosmatos’ neon-soaked surreal imagery. I couldn’t imagine this score without the visuals and vice versa, they feel completely inseparable. Mandy Love Theme is a blissful track that is comforting and warm. It’s a musical representation of the feeling you get when holding your lover in your arms. It sounds like peace... a feeling that’s instantly shattered with tracks like Horns of Abraxus and Black Skulls which are visceral and demonic, completely devoid of all familiarity and pleasantness. Tracks like Waste and Forging the Beast go hard for lack of better terminology and appeal to the 'metal' side of Cosmatos’ film. Jóhannsson perfectly keeps up with the bizarre energy that Mandy consisently puts out and is in line with it every step of the way. Not a single beat is missed as we travel through a dreamy and ethereal love state, down through thick demonic horror, and then back up through seeping electric guitar riffs that play as a revenge ballad. It's all bizarre, moody, and thick, yet consistently perfect for the film. Memories has echoes of Mandy Love Theme, but they’re washed out and faded until they are eventually overcome by the darker side of the soundtrack. A memory is only temporary and fleeting, always to be replaced by reality.

Jóhann passed at a tragic time when both his career and art were flourishing. I can’t imagine the films he worked on without his contributions. His soundtracks feel completely vital to the feeling and experience of watching them and he found a perfect balance between having classic soundtrack sensibilities and being inventive enough to sound fresh. I believe his best work was still ahead of him. Sorry if this isn’t super insightful, just wanted to commemorate someone I’m passionate about.

Rest in peace, Jóhann, I would have loved to hear your Blade Runner 2049 score.

P.S. I didn’t touch on all of his film scores and he also had a lot of great solo work that I recommend checking out if you’re interested!

Submitted February 02, 2019 at 12:48AM by laymanmovies http://bit.ly/2G4EkAg