How do you choose the projects you want to work on? Is it based on the director, the story, the entire package?
Jóhann Jóhannsson: It’s a combination of the nature of the project, the story, the concept and the team behind the film, the director, producers etc. It’s important to be really excited about an idea if you’re going to be spending 3-4 months working on it.
How did you get on board The Theory of Everything?
JJ: I met James Marsh briefly in 2010 while writing the music for the Danish documentary, The Good Life by Eva Mulvad, which he was a consultant for – James and I both lived in Copenhagen at that time. When he got in touch about The Theory of Everything, a few years later, I was immediately very interested. I'm a big fan of James as director - ever since I saw Man on Wire years ago. I loved his earlier documentary Wisconsin Death Trip also, as well as Project Nim. They're all films that treat serious subjects in a thought provoking and poetic way and I've always liked how he uses music. I have also always been fascinated by Stephen Hawking, both as a writer and theorist as well as human being. So it was really a dream project for me.
At what stage do you usually start working on a feature project?
JJ: It depends. On Denis Villeneuve’s films, I’ve been involved from before the beginning of the shoot and we discuss the music well in advance. On Prisoners for example, I wrote some themes before the shoot started, which Denis was listening to during filming. On The Theory of Everything, I was hired later, after they had edited a first assembly - a long rough cut. I don’t mind either way, although I think I prefer to be involved from the start - to visit the set and get involved early. That way it’s easier to really get into the atmosphere and mood of the film.
Cinema is a collaborative art form and the dialogue with the director is always very important. It´s also important to maintain your own voice in this kind of collaborative environment. I try to choose projects where I think that my musical voice can work with the material and enhance it and help with the storytelling. I’m usually hired because the director likes my sound and I regard the director as an artistic collaborator, much like the way I would regard a fellow musician.
For you what is the role of music in a film?
JJ: It’s different for every film, every project is different and there is no magic formula – you have to approach each project on its own terms.
In The Theory of Everything, I approached the music very much on emotional terms. It's a film about an astrophysicist, but it's essentially a love story, a story about relationships. So the music emphasizes and underlines the tension between Hawking the man and Hawking the scientist.
The score is very subtle and underlines the emotional charge in the film, without too much emphasis, and there is a piano tune that seems to gradually expand through the film. Can you explain how you found the inspiration for the score and the intricate musical composition?
JJ: I was very aware of the need for the music to be subtle and not to lay it on too thick. The story is inherently very emotionally charged, so I had to tread lightly with the music. It had to emphasize and underline and enhance the emotion, without going over the top. You don’t have to say things twice – if the emotion and mood is already conveyed by the performances and the images, you don’t need to say it again with music. So the music had to be nuanced and emphasize the subtext, the implied and the unsaid.
The initial inspiration for the score came from the performances, the chemistry between the main characters as well as the images and the mood set by the cinematography.
The film begins with a four note piano ostinato which slowly develops and blossoms into this tapestry of patterns. There are many circular and geometric visual motifs scattered throughout the film and I was very aware of this geometry and tried to echo it with the music. I worked with patterns that slowly mutate and are deconstructed and then re-assembled in various renderings throughout the film - patterns within patterns, like fractals. I believe in the power of saying things as simply as possible and if there was one phrase in the film that really inspired me, it was when Hawking describes his quest for “a simple, elegant equation which explains everything”. So, obviously in a much smaller and humbler way, I attempted to do something similar with music, to express complex emotions and an intricate and fascinating story with the simplest means available to me.
You directed the 28mn film End of Summer. Is directing really something that you want to do in the future and do you have a project in mind?
JJ: I have been making experimental shorts for several years, mainly to use as backdrops during my live shows and I’ve always been interested in the relationship between music and visuals. End of Summer was filmed in Antarctica and is a simple visual and musical poem, an ascetic, austere and very non-romantic view of nature.
I’m editing my first feature Last and First Men at the moment, which we filmed in 16mm black and white last December, with a small crew traveling in a van for four weeks through the Balkan countryside. It’s a poetic creative documentary which explores surreal, decaying, brutalist concrete monuments commissioned by Tito between the 60’s and 80’s, which are scattered throughout the countryside of the former Yugoslavian republics.
What are your next film collaborations?
JJ: I’m currently finishing the score for Denis Villeneuve’s new film Sicario. I’m also working on a piece for choir and string quartet which will premiere at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in March. In the spring I will collaborate with two other composers, Hildur Gudnadottir and Rutger Hoedemaekers on a score for the TV series Trapped, produced by Baltasar Kormákur.