The Film Score Is Doing Work Nothing Else Can

I want to start with a scene. The opening of The Zone of Interest (2023), before any image has appeared on screen, is approximately three minutes of Mica Levi’s score playing over a black frame. It is not a welcoming sound. It is a specifically dense, specifically textured mass of tones that makes the viewer feel, before any narrative information has been delivered, that they are about to watch something in which the ordinary rules of cinema will not apply. By the time the image comes up, the score has done specific dramatic work that the film then spends its entire running time developing.

That opening would not have happened in 2015. Films in 2015 did not open with three minutes of unaccompanied score. Films in 2015 did not expect audiences to sit with that kind of specifically confrontational music. Something has changed in the cultural space the film score occupies, and I want to try to describe what.

The specific composers doing specific work

Let me name some of them.

Mica Levi. Scored Under the Skin (2013), Jackie (2016), The Zone of Interest (2023). Levi’s specific contribution to contemporary film music is a radical reduction in the amount of melody the score depends on. Their scores are built from textures and tone clusters rather than from hummable themes. This was a minority approach when Levi started. It is now, a decade later, a recognised compositional tradition that other composers are learning from.

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Scored The Social Network (2010) through Challengers and Queer (2024), with substantial work in between. Reznor and Ross specifically brought the electronic-music sensibility of their Nine Inch Nails work into cinema, producing scores that are structurally closer to contemporary electronic composition than to orchestral film-score tradition. Their specific achievement is demonstrating that the electronic score can do the specific dramatic work that an orchestral score does, and do it in registers the orchestra cannot match. Challengers specifically, with its propulsive club-adjacent palette, is the clearest case of this new register’s effectiveness.

Jonny Greenwood. Scored Paul Thomas Anderson’s films since There Will Be Blood (2007), Lynne Ramsay’s We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011), Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog (2021). Greenwood’s specific contribution is the integration of contemporary-classical composition techniques (atonality, specific string-writing influenced by Penderecki and Ligeti, specific rhythmic dissonance) into mainstream prestige cinema. His There Will Be Blood score was rejected from Oscar consideration in 2007 on a technicality; the specific aesthetic it introduced has now become widely influential.

Daniel Pemberton. Scored the Spider-Verse films, The King (2019), See How They Run (2022), and specific others. Pemberton’s specific achievement is demonstrating that animation-scale film music can sustain specifically adventurous compositional choices. The Spider-Verse scores are not what animated-film music was in 2010. They are specifically thornier, more rhythmically complex, more integrated with the visual language.

Hildur Guðnadóttir. Scored Joker (2019), Chernobyl (2019), Tár (2022), Women Talking (2022). Guðnadóttir’s specific approach foregrounds specific cello and string textures with electronic processing. Her Joker score is, despite the film’s uneven reception, one of the clearest examples of film music doing specific dramatic work that no other element of the production achieves at the same level.

Nicholas Britell. Scored Moonlight (2016), If Beale Street Could Talk (2018), Succession (2018-2023), various others. Britell’s specific contribution is the combination of classical formal training with contemporary Black musical tradition. The Moonlight score is specifically hip-hop-informed in ways that classical-music training does not usually deliver.

What they are doing that their predecessors could not

I want to be specific about the generational shift. The previous generation of film composers (John Williams, Hans Zimmer, James Newton Howard, Alexandre Desplat, and their peers) did specific work at specific scale, and their specific achievements remain significant. They are not being replaced. They continue to work. What I am describing is the emergence, alongside them, of a different specific tradition that is doing specific things the classical film-score tradition did not.

Timbre over melody. The new generation writes scores built primarily on specific sonic textures rather than on hummable themes. A viewer leaving The Zone of Interest cannot sing the score in the way that a viewer leaving Star Wars can sing the score. The specific sonic experience of the film is what has been communicated, and the viewer carries that experience rather than a melodic line. This is a different kind of musical memory.

Integration with sound design. The new generation treats the score as continuous with the sound design rather than as a separate element layered on top. In The Zone of Interest, the distinction between “score” and “ambient sound of the Auschwitz camp” is specifically blurred. In Challengers, the distinction between “score” and “club music that might actually be playing in the space” is specifically blurred. The score and the sound design are, for these composers, one specific craft.

Electronic integration as default. The orchestra remains available, and the new generation uses it. But the specific electronic-music toolkit (synthesis, sampling, processing, specific production techniques) is integrated as a default rather than as a specific effect. Reznor and Ross’s scores are electronic-first with orchestral supplements, not orchestral-first with electronic effects.

Willingness to dwell on discomfort. The new generation is willing to write music that the audience does not want to hear. This is a specific departure from the classical Hollywood score, which generally offered relief. A Mica Levi score specifically denies the audience emotional relief. A Guðnadóttir score specifically makes the audience sit inside difficult feeling. The shift in audience willingness to tolerate this is partially responsible for the specific compositional freedom these composers now have.

Why the moment is arriving now

The specific cultural conditions that have made this work possible are worth naming.

Streaming allows specific music to circulate. A Mica Levi score, released as a soundtrack on streaming services, can be discovered by listeners who would not have encountered it through theatrical viewing alone. The specific circulation of film scores as independent musical objects has expanded what audiences expect from the form.

Classical-music audiences have fragmented. The traditional concert-hall audience for contemporary classical music has contracted across the last three decades. A composer trained in contemporary-classical tradition (like Guðnadóttir, or like Jonny Greenwood’s specific work after Radiohead) finds film to be the venue where their specific training can still find mass audiences. The talent flow from contemporary classical composition into film is specifically generational.

Prestige directors have demanded it. Paul Thomas Anderson, Luca Guadagnino, Jonathan Glazer, Denis Villeneuve, Christopher Nolan (working with Zimmer and then with Ludwig Göransson), and others have specifically demanded scores that do not sound like the previous generation’s film music. The directors have provided the specific commissioning space in which the new compositional approaches could be funded.

Audience tolerance has shifted. Contemporary audiences, particularly younger audiences raised on specific electronic and contemporary-classical listening, accept film music that earlier audiences would have found unwelcome. The specific tolerance has opened space for specifically adventurous compositional choices.

What to listen for

When you watch a contemporary film that specifically affects you, stay through the credits and notice the composer’s name. The same names will appear repeatedly across films you specifically respond to. The specific pattern is worth identifying.

Listen to film scores as independent musical objects. The Mica Levi soundtrack for The Zone of Interest is, on its own, one of the most interesting musical recordings of 2023. The Reznor and Ross Challengers score is one of the most interesting of 2024. The specific music is available separately from the film. Hearing it outside the film’s context deepens what the music is doing inside the film.

Resist the tendency to prefer whatever score is most melodically hummable. A great film score is not necessarily the one you can sing. It is, often, the one you cannot quite describe afterwards, only recognise when you hear it again.

The film score is in a specific moment of creative renewal. Composers who would have been working in classical-music tradition a generation ago are working in film. Composers from electronic and rock traditions are bringing their specific sensibilities to film. The result, across the last five years, has been specifically some of the best film music the form has ever produced. Pay attention. It is happening now.