[Mark Burgess]

Just saw the film, and listened to the soundtrack twice. There is a lot to digest.

I saw the film at Klingenberg, where the sound was rather too poor for such an important experience. It spoiled a lot of the sonic/musical moments for me, with booming bass. Thank goodness for the texting! After a slightly chaotic first hour, the film found its pace and ended up being rather good, I think. Musically, I’m of two minds. There is some brilliant originality there, which paints a surreal mood over the whole experience. A simple melodic score would have been completely wrong for the spiritual, god-driven atmosphere of the film. For me LG’s music oscillates between brilliance and “not for me”. He clearly has a profound talent, but doesn’t always write for the kind of film that moves me.

The vocal contributions were a nice touch, I think. And the final “outro” credits song was nicely done — a blend of modern and back to the 90s, Lamb.

I tend to agree with Thor that the 2 hour long album is too much. Some of it is superb, definitely surpassing what Zimmer could have contrived, but some editing would have helped a lot. It’s a sign of our streaming times that one can simply dump an electronic score without editing rather than produce a special album, as in decades past. I do think that this is some of LG’s best music since the Mandalorian (season 1). In an increasingly formulaic industry, he is one of the few innovative voices in music. There must be new voices.

It’s easy to underestimate how much the score carries the film. Some parts would not have worked without the layered tension that sometimes seems to go on for too long on the album, but were timed perfectly in terms of action. The film doesn’t waste time, in spite if being 3 hours long. Sometimes the editing almost feels nonchalant — deliberately not making a thing of certain moments (as Thor alluded to).

There were some weaker moments in the score, but the most annoying part for me was the American accents of the actors. The more street-rap they were, the worse it felt. Much as I tried to switch off and treat it as a common but translated vernacular, someone would slap me out of it with an awful line delivery. The discussion that has blown up about the race of the casting choices did not bother me at all. The jet black Helen of Troy was nothing if not a face to launch a thousand ships. Stunning. I thought the casting was mostly pretty great.