Interviewed by Collider, composer Alexandre Desplat commented in Kathryn Bigelow‘s Zero Dark Thirty and on top of saying, “It’s the best thing that she has ever done,” he also adds the following:
“I know it sounds like an action film, but it’s more like a Japanese Kurosawa movie. And the way I approached it was very organic and I used a very strange lineup. At Abbey Road I had twin horns, twin trombones, three tubas. I had strings, I had violins, twin celli and twin basses. It’s a very strange sound, very deep, very dark, but as I said very archaic as if the sound was coming from 2000 years ago.”
It’s an interesting comment. It’s hard to really tell if this is his interpretation of the film and so, as a result, how he approached it tonally or if it actually plays out like a Kurosawa samurai feature. My guess is the former, particularly because of the following comment:
“It’s a war movie about two parties killing each other, so I wanted the score to be very archaic and dark. It’s never brutal because it doesn’t have to be loud.
I just wish the interviewer at Collider had asked for some Kurosawa comparisons, but oh well.
The mystery surrounding Zero Dark Thirty is hard to ignore as we know very little so far and only little pieces such as this are coming out every so often, only increasing the excitement surrounding it. Adding to his effusive comments Desplat also said of the film, “It’s fabulous; she’s a master director. She’s a genius, it’s a film that’s incredible.”
December 19 can’t get here soon enough.
