Requiem For A Dream

Clint Mansell featuring Kronos Quartet
Requiem For A Dream
Nonesuch, 2000

The trailer screening now for sci-fi flick Sunshine features some incredible music: a huge ensemble of violins stabbing down on the audience like the shower scene from Psycho, threatening and tender at the same time. The composition has been used by a string of big-budget trailers in the last few years, including The Da Vinci Code and the second instalment of The Lord Of The Rings, but it was originally written for a very different film.

The piece, 'Lux Aeterna', was the musical motif of Requiem For A Dream, Brooklyn director Darren Aronofsky's adaptation of a novel about four drug addicts whose lives wind up utterly fucked. It was written by Clint Mansell (from alternative band Pop Will Eat Itself, who appeared twice in the Triple J Hottest 100 in the early '90s) and performed by the famous Kronos Quartet. To say it has been the soundtrack for more disturbing things than orcs getting squished or Tom Hanks running around would be an understatement.

Requiem is no Sunday night movie. Mansell's score is divided between throbbing, twitchy electronic pieces and string compositions. As the film goes on the two styles become more entwined, until it's impossible to figure out if it's the computer screaming or the violin. The effect peaks while the screen shows an old woman having electro-shock therapy in close-up. At the same point in the story, the protagonist is having an arm amputated and his girlfriend is fucking in front of businessmen to score heroin.

The theme 'Lux Aeterna' doesn’t actually play during those scenes. It pops up during the interludes between traumas, like a sad but sweet breather. 'The Beginning Of The End' and its variations do the dirty work. That piece is also driven by the Kronos Quartet, but it's much more violent. It sounds like a horde of troops bearing down. Two instruments keep the mood while another hacks at itself relentlessly, like the soldiers' boots hitting the dirt. It gets louder, faster and painfully shrill until a single booming drum interrupts it: a terrified heartbeat. Even without the film to accompany it, the score is gut-wrenching.