Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross On the Vulnerable Core for the Score of ‘Empire of Light’

You can immediately tell that Sam Mendes’ Empire of Life is a very personal endeavor. For an intimate portrait of people climbing out of their own sadness, Mendes brought on board composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and it is one of the duo’s most heartfelt collaborations to date. They skillfully tap into the delicacy of the human heart and its pulsing need to be loved and cared for.

The theater at the center of the film is its own character. The paneling on the inside of the lobby is warm and inviting. The lights glow against the cloud, grey sky. It’s undeniably alive, and Reznor and Ross discovered just how much this space meant to the director as they started preliminary work on the film.

“We spent four or five months where we were talking with Sam every couple of weeks,” Ross said. “We talked about the script and his vision, and we started with some musical experiments to try and find the world that we are in. During that process, Sam was very detailed about the space that he was going to shoot in, and he was sending us pitches about that space. He let us know how special and how magical a cinema is—that something that we both feel as well. In terms of honoring it, that opening cue was very much built around the Empire.”

“Roger [Deakins] shot it in such a way that let us know that we needed to handle it with reverence. That was very clear,” Reznor added.

As you listen to the score, you might notice the presence of a lot of piano cues. This wasn’t intentional, but Reznor feels a kinship with the instrument, and he kept coming back to it when he realized just how supportive the score was to the emotions of Empire of Light. The notes trickle and coo–almost as if they are as tentative as Olivia Colman’s character, Hilary.

“It wasn’t by design necessarily,” Reznor admits. “We didn’t know Sam and he didn’t know us before this film, but we knew that it was important to him for a variety of reason. He was very open about where he was during the script phases, so feeling that inclusion was nice for us. We would send him some improvisational cues since it hadn’t been shot yet, but it was ways for us to articulate different arrangements and different swatches. It was a way for us to connect with Margate in winter, looking out over the ocean with snow falling. This feels like longing. We wanted to show him that we could do it, but we wanted to feel out if we were matching what he thought in his head. Should this be solo piano? Should it be a string quartet? Can we delve into that world? As we got into the meat of what the music meant for this film and the emotional weight it had to carry and the precise story it had to tell at time…piano, to me, is the most expressive instrument. It’s the one that I can get to sound the way I do in my head. We didn’t set out to do a piano score, but it had a directness and a beauty and a humble, vulnerable side to it.”

There are two moments in the film that call to a specific dread. In ‘Sandcastle Breakdown,’ Hilary surprises Michael Ward’s Stephen with her intense jealousy, and their seaside detour takes an unexpected turn. Later on in the film, a group of skinheads attack the beloved theater, and it shatters, for a moment, the idyllic paradise so many of us find when we enter a movie theater. Both cues are used in obviously different moments in the story, but the danger Reznor and Ross brings to our ears is mighty.

“There was about three solid weeks—ten hours a day—of “Mod March” playing at 140 decibels in this room,” Reznor said.

“On one level, you might think that the ‘Mod March’ is a simple piece of music in that someone could read it as a drone,” Ross added. “It was one of the hardest ones to crack for unknown reasons, but what you are hearing is a very multilayered journey of the danger of a skinhead attack. The journey from there transforms into the journey to the hospital. I’m not sure why it took so long to get right, but what Trent says about the world that the piano subtly sits in…you could look at those cues and realize it’s all about honest emotions. Especially when it comes to Hilary and Stephen’s relationship.

“With ‘Sandcastle,’ we need to capture the moment where someone, who is bipolar, stops taking their meds. They are feeling good, so they don’t think they need them but it can be very unpredictable. It felt like that beautiful world that the piano sits in—like when they first make love—changes into something else. I think you can look at the ‘Mod March’ and ‘Sandcastle Breakdown’ as the music that sits behind the piano transforming into something else and becoming a bit more specific to someone coming  On their meds. There are moments of jealous and the more general threat in the second cue. One is a very personal fear.”

One of the most emotional moments in the film comes when Hilary steps into the Empire and asks Toby Jones’ projectionist, Norman, to play her a film. “Any film,” she tells him exasperatedly, and we realize that she has worked at the theater for many years and never experienced intimate moment when the lights go down. In ‘Solo Screening,’ Reznor and Ross knew that they couldn’t fake sentimentality and they needed to be as honest as they possibly could be.

‘Solo Screening’ was tough, because it was one of the last ones that we were getting to,” Reznor admitted. “We were intimidated by it, because it is such an important moment. It is the emotional revelation for three of four minutes of watching someone watching a film. We had gotten to know Sam very well by this point, and the interaction with Sam was always very open but very meticulous. When spotting a scene, every moment has been considered. You can hear cleverness or when someone is trying to show off. I can tell when I am skimming the surface. You need to be sincere. With this one, Sam knew the original submission could’ve been better, and there was a lot of back and forth with that. What we came up with was better, and we will be the first to admit when we are wrong. He made that better. I watched it last night in a theater for the first time with other people, and I was crying during that section. It is a profound moment in the film, and we are grateful that we got to do this job.”

Empire of Light is now playing in select theaters.