Is Christopher Nolan's excellent SF opus undermined by a musical hosing?

As my friend and I walked out of our long-delayed viewing of Inception yesterday (I don't get to attend many of the preview screenings at this site), any kind of consensus seemed to escape us. We spent about fifteen minutes deciding where to have something to eat afterward, but at least that came to some kind of conclusion. We had both been looking forward to this movie so much, one might think we were reluctant to admit what it was about it that bothered us.

The post-mortem wasn't getting anywhere. Inception was visually stunning, extremely well-made and in no way thematically vapid. In addition, it was a genuine science-fiction film with no magicians, a good budget and great talent behind it, and we had enjoyed it enormously. And hey, if the trailers made us expect even more than we got...isn't that what their mission is? We felt in no way cheated. Not at all.

I eyed the erzatz, rubbery mozzarella in my ciabatta.

"You can get real mozzarella anywhere these days," I mused. "Even at the corner shops near me, most days. The cheap one at Sainsburys is nice, even if they don't use buffalo milk."

"I think it was the pacing," said my friend. "Look at Star Wars, Alien...perfect pacing."

I thought about it. Replayed Christopher Nolan's lengthy SF mindfuck for myself, and had to conclude that Inception actually has a solid, if rather classical structure. No surprises there - even the Dark Knight director wasn't going to get that kind of budget for something quite as brain-defying as his 2000 masterpiece Memento. Inception is a text-book three-acter...

ACT 1: The big Bond-style all-action opener. The Backstory.

ACT 2: Setting up the mission. The training. Suitable (but not extended) pauses between action and stunts/VFX.

ACT 3: The mission. Backstory pays off.

There's nothing wrong with that. Fill such a structure with invention, good production values, and an intelligent script backed up by good performances, and that feeling of numbness that we were left with afterward should have no justification.

Finally we agreed what it was that had partially immured us to Inception's considerable charms: Hans Zimmer's relentless score. Wall to wall music/zak.

The reason one doesn't notice Zimmer's musical tinnitus in The Dark Knight and Inception the same way many have criticised Murray Gold's overbearing Doctor Who scores is that here the composer is seeking not to manipulate the emotions of the audience at key points, but to strike a single note throughout: tension.

And early on in Inception, it works. The deep Se7en-style bassoon surges do indeed get us very tense, and in a good way. Tense things are happening on screen, and are mirrored in a score of very subdued invention, an undercurrent of sound that works because it isn't fighting its way to the front constantly.

Trouble is, it never stops. It didn't seem to let up once. Nor did it peak or abate. Consequently Inception seemed like some fifteen year-old so addicted to music that his ears are growing over his iPod buds.

"After a while," my friend noted, "you just tune it out."

Hence the ability we all have to sleep through traffic, waterfalls, and anything else that is rhythmic in nature. Sometimes it's only when a sound stops that you notice it was ever there. Thus the many DVD commentaries noting the legendary battles between composers, directors and sound-effects/foley personnel, as to whether music is needed at key points. Thus the many successful directors and composers who have affirmed that an effective score is one that knows when to shut up.

I haven't IMDB'd Inception, and don't know if it even employed a music editor - only that it needed one. It needed an R. Lee Ermey of a music editor, because after one hour of Zimmer's Glass-esque, cyclic refrains, the film effectively had no score at all for me and my friend. The lack of variation in the musical backdrop turned the music's tension into dismissible 'traffic noise' for us.

I wonder if the pressure to wash out a film with soundtrack is proportional to the budget? Neither Nolan's lower-budget outings The Prestige nor Memento suffer from the same lack of impulse control as Hans Zimmer's virtually unbroken (and apparently unedited) scores for Inception and The Dark Knight.

Maybe I'm being hypercritical, having recently caught up with HBO's The Wire, wherein David Simon's hatred of any score strips the action and dialogue of any musical accompaniment (with the exception of songs on the radio, songs sung by characters in the show and one single end-of-season montage per season).

I love that about The Wire, but I also love a good score that has ideas, restraint and impact. For just one example of a contemporary movie composer getting it right and working in harmony with the other competing audio elements of a film, check out the back-catalogue of Christopher Young, and most especially his against-the-grain sensibilities on Copycat (1995).

One can't necessarily blame Hans Zimmer for the deadening effect of the Inception tinnitus; anyone who could come up with work as stirring and thematic as he did in Gladiator (2000), both alone and with Lisa Gerrard, clearly has range. For some reason, Christopher Nolan doesn't seem to be asking him to stretch it, or even reining in the leash. I just wish that Zimmer and those who hire him would remember what it takes to have that kind of effect - chiaroscuro; or pianoforte, if you prefer as more appropriate. if you never stop talking, no-one at all will hear you.

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