Composer: ‘Oppenheimer’ Score Goes Beyond What’s ‘Humanly Possible’

What are the hallmarks of a Christopher Nolan film? Immense IMAX imagery. Starry ensembles. Long takes. Tight, geometric compositions. Nonlinear story. And, of course, a booming score.

For the music to Oppenheimer, a sprawling epic about how J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) became the so-called “father of the atomic bomb” and Nolan’s most ambitious picture to date, the revered filmmaker turned to none other than Ludwig Göransson. The composer had worked on Nolan’s previous film, Tenet, and the director knew he was the right man for the job.

“The film’s score grew very organically and very gradually from the smallest elements. I had no preconceptions about the music for the film,” says Nolan. “And in this case, all I had that I gave Ludwig was the idea of basing the score on the violin. There’s a tension to the sound in a way that I think fits the highly-strung intellect and emotion of Robert Oppenheimer very well.”

See an exclusive behind-the-scenes clip on scoring Oppenheimer:

“Chris is with me every step of the way,” adds Göransson. “He meets every moment of this process with so much conviction — he has these deeply thoughtful, very specific ideas of how he wants every scene to feel, and yet, he is wonderfully collaborative and open.”

Scoring Oppenheimer was a completely different experience for Göransson than Tenet, since the biographical drama chronicling the Manhattan Project “transcends the idea of genre” and “somehow manages to be a gripping thriller, an unconventional biopic, a devastating horror film, and a haunting love story.”

“I grew up in Sweden, where we have a very different relationship with nuclear weapons than we do in the U.S.,” explains Göransson. “Although the entire world knows the devastation the Manhattan Project’s success led to, I’m not sure that most people, or at least people of my generation, are aware of how much this story has shaped each of our lives the way they will after seeing Oppenheimer. Finding my way through that was pretty tough.”

And Göransson is not easily intimidated. The musical maestro met Ryan Coogler at USC and has scored every Coogler film, winning the Oscar for Black Panther. His first major gig was composing the music for the NBC series Community, which is where he befriended Donald Glover. He’s since produced all four Childish Gambino albums, including the Grammy-winning song “This Is America.” Oh, and he won an Emmy for scoring Star Wars spinoff series The Mandalorian. (For those counting, that’s a Tony away from an EGOT.) But Göransson was apprehensive about creating the music for such a mammoth movie.

“I must admit that when I initially read the script and grasped the vast terrain that Oppenheimer would engulf, I felt overwhelmed.  However, when I saw the first visuals, something started to click, revealing a path that led me and Chris to some interesting discussions and destinations.  Some of the ideas took time to execute, but we were fortunate to have an incredible group of musicians who were open and dedicated to the project,” says Göransson.

“In the end,” he continues, “we recorded music that surpassed what I believed to be humanly possible. The perplexing visuals of spinning atoms drove forty violins into a breathtaking frenzy, while courtroom scenes were scored with the intensity of a battlefield. The music’s extreme dynamic shifts, travelling from the depths of an intimately personal journey to the brink of utter destruction, are drastic, disorientating, and jarring.”

Oppenheimer hits theaters July 21^st.