September 11, 2017 – Toronto, California, Canada – Darren Aronofsky (director) of the Film: Mother! (Credit Image: © Armando Gallo via ZUMA Studio)
  • Music

On Music: Darren Aronofsky’s Bold Choices

A Golden Globe nominee for Black Swan, filmmaker Darren Aronofsky gives a lot of importance to the music score in his films. But for his latest, the controversial mother! , he made a surprising choice.

“Usually my films are wall-to-wall music, as you know from Requiem For A Dream and the Golden Globe score nominated for The Fountain. And for mother! I worked with Johann Johannsson for four and a half months on a score, but what Johann realized was that whenever we stuck it into a scene, it cheated and let the audience know to feel.  And the reality is, Jen (Jennifer Lawrence) was the score of the movie.  You were leaning into seeing what she’s feeling and trying to figure out what she was thinking and if you didn’t pay attention to that and the music came in, it just tilted it off and gave too much away.  We decided not to use the score. There is a full score written.  We are talking about hopefully making it into an opera one day.”