Soundtracks · Explainer ·
Hildur Guðnadóttir wrote the Joker score from the script, before filming, and the cast heard it on set. The cello leads, kept almost hidden at first, then swells with Arthur's anger.
A short guide to how the score was made, what it won, and how to hear it. Includes a toy cello you can play, and a few headphone picks for listening properly.
Most film composers arrive late. The picture is cut, the scenes have a shape, and the music is fitted to them. The score for Joker (2019, directed by Todd Phillips) ran the other way round: Hildur Guðnadóttir wrote it from the script, before the cameras turned, and the cast could hear it while they worked. This is how that happened, and what the music is doing.
According to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Guðnadóttir wrote the first music after reading only the script. Phillips sent it over, she wrote from Berlin while the production was in the United States, and the team used her themes during shooting. Dailies then travelled back to her so she could write more in response. She began on the cello, an instrument she has played since she was five, and has described the moment she found the first notes of the Joker theme as something that "completely clicked".
She was open about the risk. Speaking to TheWrap, she said writing early is riskier because you can throw away a lot of music, but that it gave her time to grow into the storytelling. The pay-off is a score that behaves less like a coat of paint and more like a scene partner.
For the cello, I wanted cello to be almost hidden in the beginning.
Hildur Guðnadóttir, interviewed by /Film
Phillips wanted the cello at the centre of the storytelling. Guðnadóttir kept it understated at first, and the score grows as Arthur's anger does. She also said the opening piece sounds like a solo cello while a full orchestra plays beneath it. The album, 36 minutes over 17 tracks, was recorded in New York in June 2019 and is string-led, with percussion, electronics and voice. Its credit list includes viola, violin, double bass, brass and woodwinds, and an electro-acoustic string instrument called the halldorophone.
Why a cello? It sits low, in the register of a human voice, and it can sound like a person holding something in. You can hear the low end of that range below. It is a toy, not the score: four open strings and a slider that adds voices as the "pressure" rises, the way the music is described as building.
The rest discusses scenes from later in the film.
The best-known story is the bathroom dance. Guðnadóttir has said it was not in the original script. Phillips brought her music to Joaquin Phoenix hoping it might help him find the character, and, in her words, Phoenix "just started to move". She has described the piece as the first thing she wrote, with her strongest physical reaction to the story, and said she and Phoenix ended up on the same page without discussing it. It is a clean example of a score shaping a performance rather than following one.
At the other end, the finale scales up. She told TheWrap she decided it was fun to use harmonies and "macho chords" in the riot scene, adding that the revolution just kind of happens while Arthur is stuck in his anger, as opposed to something he masterminds. The cello's confession becomes a crowd.
The score won the Golden Globe in January 2020, the BAFTA in February, and the Academy Award for Best Original Score on 9 February 2020. The soundtrack album added a Grammy for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media in March 2021, and a nomination for the arrangement of "Bathroom Dance".
Give it a quiet room and a pair of headphones, because the story is in the bottom of the sound: low strings, a slow bow, the point where one cello turns into many. Listen once to the album front to back, watching for the moment the instrument stops hiding. If you have seen the film, "Bathroom Dance" and "Call Me Joker" make a good pair. The first is the score finding its feet, the second is where it reaches the top of its range.
Headphones with good low-end control and a quiet background help most. A few that suit the job are listed below, from cheap to indulgent.
Int. the prop room · continuous
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An easy way to give a score your full attention: closed ear cups and noise cancelling hush the room, so the slow low strings stay audible.
Over-ear · Bluetooth · Noise cancelling
A well-known all-rounder for long listening sessions, with strong noise cancelling that suits a score built on quiet passages and deep bass.
Over-ear · Bluetooth · Noise cancelling
Sony's newer flagship over-ear model, for when you want the quietest background and the most detail from low strings and layered orchestration.
Over-ear · Bluetooth · Noise cancelling
