Muriel Award: Best Music (Original, Adapted or Compiled)

There was a time, early on in the ballot tabulation, where I thought this race might be close and the second-place finisher could sneak in up top. Boy, was I wrong about that.

Third place:



Inception (score by Hans Zimmer) [82 points / 14 votes]

Second place:



Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (score by Nigel Godrich, additional music by Steve Price, music supervisor Kathy Nelson, songs by Beck Hansen and others) [85/14]

And your winner...





The Social Network (score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross) [189/27]

"When Trent Reznor announced last summer he would be composing the music to The Social Network, it seemed both an inspired idea and an odd union of subject matter and artist. Reznor and director David Fincher had been circling one another for years, with Fincher directing the video "Only" for Reznor’s band Nine Inch Nails and both men at the center of a long-rumored Fight Club musical. Yet at the same time, Reznor’s known for being a stubborn iconoclast, thumbing his nose at the establishment, isolating himself from his peers and the recording industry at large by giving away his music and calling out by name those who fail to live up to his towering standards. A genius of the recording studio (Reznor will write and produce entire albums in the span of a couple weeks, often playing most of the instruments himself) whose work seamlessly oscillates from shrieking rage to self-lacerating melancholy, Reznor’s music projects thinly veiled contempt, often aimed outwards but most memorably when placing himself, the self-destructive "asshole," in his own crosshairs. What could this man *possibly* have in common with the dude who created Facebook?

The joke is obvious in hindsight. Reznor along with his co-composer and band mate Atticus Ross (himself an accomplished composer, having scored The Book of Eli for the Hughes Brothers earlier in the year) were presented a version of Mark Zuckerberg - the isolated loner, lashing out through technology at those who had wronged him. This Zuckerberg was a tormented prodigy most at ease in front of a computer, intimidated by jocks and pretty girls; it’s not hard to imagine Zuckerberg stocking his iPod with NIN songs and nodding along to "nothing can stop me now/I just don’t care!"

That Reznor and Ross tapped into Zuckerberg’s tightly coiled resentment, superiority complex and sense of isolation comes as no surprise. What *is* surprising is how the two men helped transform scenes of characters tapping away at keyboards late at night into propulsive action sequences. Watching Zuckerberg build the Facemash website on a whim feels like the hacker equivalent of putting the first man on the moon, with Reznor and Ross’s music providing the rocket fuel; conversely, layering a subterranean drone over two nerds hooking up with groupies in a public bathroom deepens the sensation of transgression. Staid depositions carry an air of barely concealed malevolence thanks to a John Carpenter-like electronic piano. Even lunch with Justin Timberlake resembles an audience with Mephistopheles, thanks to a repetitive and steadily expanding electronic refrain that explodes into moans, atonal percussions and the wail of an electric guitar.

As a discipline, modern film composing is often shoved into a complimentary or subservient role, meant to underscore what we’re seeing without calling attention to itself and to accent what we’re supposed to be feeling without imposing its own meaning upon the imagery. Reznor and Ross, however, eschewed writing musical wallpaper - the film’s music was written without the benefit of seeing the finished movie, instead springing forth from reading the script, watching roughly half an hour of footage and discussing the themes of the film with Fincher. The final result is, in essence, a concept album about the spark of creation, the sting of rejection and the echoing of loneliness. That just happens to work perfectly with Fincher’s vision for the film; one might even say that the score provides a conscience and troubled soul for Network's chilly compositions and restrained performances. As distinct and memorable as anything they’d created while touring the world as rock stars for twenty years, The Social Network announces Reznor and Ross as formidable talents in the world of composing. The film industry is a much more exciting place because of it." - Andrew Dignan

See the full results.