‘Oppenheimer’ Composer Ludwig Göransson On Emoting The Personality Of Atomic Bomb Physicist Through Music – Crew Call Podcast

Anthony D'Alessandro
·2 min read
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It’s amazing how a score can impact a Hollywood composer’s career, similar to how a breakout movie can turn an actor’s fate around.

In the case of the careers of Michael Giacchino it was arguably The Incredibles which took him from being a videogame composer to blockbuster musicsmith, while for Alexandre Desplat’s, one can point to Birth which provoked Hollywood to call him nonstop.

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Ludwig Göransson had a longstanding working relationship with USC bud Ryan Coogler, but it was his score for the director’s Black Panther which rocked him to a mega-tentpole stratosphere and ultimately a new working relationship with Christopher Nolan on 2020’s Tenet and last year’s Oppenheimer.

In anomaly for a composer, Göransson won an original score Oscar off his first nom for Black Panther. It wouldn’t be out of the norm to see the Swedish born composer taking the stage again at the Dolby Theatre to collect his second original Oscar win for Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer.

In addition to its rapid editing, what keeps Oppenheimer at an alacrity in its three-hour tale of nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer is its wall-to-wall orchestral and digital infused score by Göransson.

The composer details using brass, but also “the violin to emote the personality and the characteristics of Oppenheimer’s”

“The performance of the violin can go from like a beautiful, somber, romantic vibrato,” says Göransson, “But then with the split second, you can go to something incredibly horrific and erotic, just depending on how you move your hands, doing the vibrato.”

The composer adds about the dynamic range, “And also another thing that’s so interesting with the violin is how you can emote a really intimate feeling like a close up or feeling in space with just one solo violin playing the theme. But the in the next scene, they’re putting up a bomb or like getting ready to return and you can have four to six violins come in and make it feel huge.”

It’s all part of the composer’s talent to connect the audience with the emotions onscreen as well as the political intensity upon Oppenheimer’s shoulder.

Göransson tells us about his tenure with Coogler, as well as Nolan in today’s Crew Call.

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