What Makes a Great Film Score

A great score does something strange: it makes you feel as though the film had always sounded this way.

The Dark Knight is a good test. Strip out the music and the film is still a tense crime thriller. Put it back and it becomes something closer to a myth, driven by a sustained tone that never quite resolves.

Oppenheimer uses music almost as a nervous system, a constant pulse that never lets you settle. It is less a score than a state of mind.

The test I use is simple: could you hum the film’s feeling, even if you could not hum its tune? If so, the music has done its job.