Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' score for The Social Network was brilliant because it worked as a conventional film score even though its approach was boldly unconventional. The pair assembled a dense but brittle map of drones, foreboding sound effects, and delicate melodies, submerging acoustic sounds in pools of digital filters. The result was something suited to filmmaker David Fincher's work-- brooding, mysterious, and tinged with anxiety. The film world agreed: Reznor's first foray into soundtrack work after putting Nine Inch Nails on hiatus landed him both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe. Who knew? Fincher clearly has confidence in their abilities, as he tapped Reznor and Ross once again to score his latest movie, the film adaption of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. With the team earning another Golden Globe nomination, it would seem like they're doing something right.
Dragon Tattoo doesn't differ drastically from Social Network but it's not a retread. For starters, this one's a three-hour beast, spread out over three CDs, six vinyl LPs, or a whopping 39 digital files. So while The Social Network could be received as a digestible standalone product, Girl With the Dragon Tattoo doesn't offer the same sort of flexibility. That's in part by design as much as structure: Where The Social Network had discernible motifs like "Hand Covers Bruise" and pseudo-techno like "In Motion", the music here is more obtuse, focused on building tension and defining space rather than conveying feeling or emotion through melody. Which means there are few standout tracks; instead, the most arresting moments emerge out of layers of increasingly damaged sounds that set an uncompromisingly bleak mood.
The score's overcast outlook is well suited to Fincher's portrayal of Sweden as an outwardly and proudly modern country overrun with the dehumanizing potential of technology. It's a place haunted equally by industrial remnants of past eras and shameful personal and political histories. The task of Reznor and Ross is to create something conflicted between technology and tradition, and they opt for a sound that's essentially future-baroque: fiercely plucked strings, ominous bass, decaying chimes, and spare pianos held together with meticulous post-processing.
But where Dragon Tattoo excels in its role as soundtrack, it falters in listenability: imagine something like Ghosts I-IV but almost double the length and without all the catchy parts. True, it is easy to admire the sheer complexity of their work in small doses. Pieces like "Hypomania" drift into clouds of hellish distortion and re-emerge, while "Oraculum" features vividly tactile drums that feel heavily removed from your typical Hollywood percussive suspense music. So while this might be a soundtrack, it rises above mere Hollywood muzak.
As the set drifts into its third and final disc, the pace begins to pick up and form shapes that might be recognizable to Reznor adherents. "Great Bird of Prey" could be an instrumental leftover from The Fragile days, while "Infiltrator" weaves in and out of sections of intensely energetic movement. "An Itch" traps what sounds like human screams and moans beneath an actual beat, while the warbly "Closer" piano even makes a reappearance in "The Heretics", a sly wink and nod to its composers' considerable musical history.
For those fans who wouldn't want to spend $300 on a 6xLP box set of soundtrack music, Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is likely to remain a curiosity apart from its two bookending vocal tracks. The movie's sleek opening sequence is soundtracked by the Reznor and Karen O's cover of Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song", a mean reminder of the power Reznor's pop music holds at its most ferocious. On the other end of the spectrum, the three hours wind down with a cover of Bryan Ferry's "Is Your Love Strong Enough?" by How to Destroy Angels (the band composed of Ross, Reznor, and wife Mariqueen Maandig). To hear a human voice so bright and clear after what's come before is a moment of pure pop relief. But pop is not what Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is about. It's reasonable to question the necessity of a score whose sprawling mass exceeds the length of the film it's meant for. But even if it doesn't quite work as a standalone experience, the real takeaway here is that Reznor and Ross may be ushering in an exciting new realm of possibility for mainstream film scoring.
