Love it or leave it, Damien Chazelle’s Babylon stands as a completely unforgettable experience. Set in Hollywood during the late 1920s, Chazelle’s film boasts an all-star cast featuring Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Jovan Adepo, Diego Calva, Jean Smart, Tobey Maguire, and many, many more in a story about Hollywood’s rough road converting from silent film to talkies. Yet, the visceral, immersive, and often manic film doesn’t shy away from the legendary debauchery of the era. In fact, it revels in it, thrusting the gritty details right into our face and forcing the audience to confront the very worst of Hollywood lore.
Given the vastly cinematic nature of his film, Chazelle needed a score that would accompany and enhance his often nightmarish visual. For that, he turned to long-time friend Justin Hurwitz, Oscar-winner for 2016’s La La Land.
Hurwitz’s score combines modern and period-specific instrumentation to shift the roughly 2-hours worth of composition away from period jazz and into a decidedly modern sound. His score employs an often touchingly subtle and tender approach and shocks the senses with a frequently bombastic, borderline hallucinatory and manic sound. It provides period-specific music in mash-ups with classical compositions in a way that echoes the madness of a broken-down merry-go-round.
You’ve not heard something quite like Hurwitz’s Babylon score, now available on all music streaming sites.
Here, in a video interview with Awards Daily, Hurwitz discusses his process in creating the score for the 3-hour epic. He talks about his hugely collaborative partnership with Damien Chazelle and how they used their symbiotic connection to deliver the perfect sound. He also talks about his choices in instrumentation, including such varied selections as the theremin. Hurwitz also reveals the inspirations for several themes within the film, including the trajectory of Jovan Adept’s brilliantly talented jazz trumpet player in the film. Finally, he reveals what composition proved the most challenging to construct among the wall-to-wall composition.
Justin Hurwitz’s score is now streaming. Babylon opens nationwide on December 23.
