In April 2013, a contributor from Film Music Reporter announced that Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson would compose music for Prisoners.[1] Villeneuve contacted Jóhannsson via his agent after he listened to some of his scores and offered the film before it began production.[2] He then wrote a couple of pieces much earlier that was used in the final edit, so that there was almost no temp music used. Jóhannsson settled on three themes—"The Keeper", "I Can't Find Them" and "Through Falling Snow"—which served as the basis of the score.[3] He visited the sets of the film in Atlanta, to have a clear idea of the film's atmosphere and get the sense of the locations. He eventually listened to most of the church music, old Icelandic hymns and Renaissance-sacred music and integrated them into the themes. Calling "The Lord’s Prayer" as the difficult piece, despite being the simple them, he recalled that he went to a small island with about 20 inhabitants in the North Iceland to isolate himself and rewrote the theme 15 times, until the final version was zeroed on.[3]
According to Jóhannsson, the role of the film's music was not only to create tension, but also to create "a kind of poetic and lyrical counterpoint to the horror of the events depicted in the film".[4] He added that, "while the action is terrifying and horrific, the music has this beauty and fragility and lyricism which, in a strange way, amplifies the effect the film has on you."[4]
Jóhannsson recorded a session with experimental musician Erik Knive Skodvin in Berlin during the recording session and generated a lot of drones and soundscapes which he used in the writing process.[5] Skodovin's recording of unsettling layers in the soundscape, was curated and layered with the drones and soundscapes. Jóhannsson did not want a pipe organ, in favor of an ethereal instrument without any religious association that a pipe organ has, hence, he layered the Cristal Baschet and Ondes Martenot to curate "floating, dream-like sound". Thomas Bloch played the specific instrument and cellist Hildur Guðnadóttir (who would later become a film composer) also worked on the film score.[3]
Prisoners marked the maiden association with Jóhannsson and Villeneuve who would later collaborate on Sicario (2015) and Arrival (2016).[6][7] He was initially announced as the composer for Blade Runner 2049 (2017) but in order to curate a score which was closer Vangelis' soundtrack for Blade Runner (1982), Villenueve decided to end his collaboration with Jóhannsson and eventually roped in Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch to score the film.[8]
Release
Critical reception
Scott Foundas of Variety wrote "Score by Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson (also making his big-studio debut) strikes just the right haunting, mournful notes."[9] Kate Erbland of Film School Rejects mentioned Jóhannsson's score as one of the positives.[10]
^Thompson, Melissa; McCue, Michelle (January 7, 2014). "15 Best Film Scores of 2013". We Are Movie Geeks. Archived from the original on October 23, 2014. Retrieved June 27, 2024.
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