Dream Within A Dream
Hans Zimmer
Inception (2010)Subtlety has never been Hans Zimmer’s strongest suit. Especially in his recent compositions for Hollywood blockbusters, he’s been one to favor convoluted confluences of musical onomatopoeias over consistently gentle sequences of sounds. Many are averse to Zimmer’s persistent methodical assaults to their auditory canals and, by extension, to their amygdalae (you know, those groups of nerves responsible for emotional reactions, presumably including the ones you feel while watching a film with wall-to-wall music). But this predilection for systematic amplification played to his score’s advantage in Guy Ritchie’s jocular Sherlock Holmes, where strings and percussions banter vigorously amid wild goose chases and bromantic misadventures, and, to a more palpable but altogether humorless extent, in Christopher Nolan’s self-serious Inception, where, as exemplified by Dream Within A Dream, sound waves crash on sound waves crash on sound waves crash on sound waves, some bearing the faintest hints of softness but most others reaching decibels so high that Edith Piaf might have been roused from her grave as though only from a dream. BRRRAAAWWWRWRRRMRMRMMRMRMMM!!!
