“Gone Girl” Soundtrack Review
Composer: Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

As excellent as their work together has been, I’ve been hesitant to compare the David Fincher, Trent Reznor, and Atticus Ross director/composer relationship to the likes of Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann, Steven Spielberg and John Williams, or even Christopher Nolan and Hans Zimmer, but I’m done being shy about it. Regardless of whether or not you believe Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross worthy of being mentioned among those composers, few can dispute what a perfect, why-didn’t-they-think-of-this-sooner match their music makes with the visuals of David Fincher. The key distinction between a good director/composer combination a great one is where the music becomes inseparable from the identity of the film, and that has certainly become the case over the last three films Fincher has done. Reznor and Ross’ latest effort, the score for Fincher’s latest, “Gone Girl,” is much the same, albeit with a few caveats.

The score for “Gone Girl” is decidedly reserved, especially when compared to the icy expanses of “Dragon Tattoo.” It doesn’t rival that film’s compositions in terms of breadth of experimentation or in terms of sheer bombastic energy. The score for “Gone Girl” is instead more targeted, less the catch-all, operatic blockbuster that “Dragon Tattoo” was. It’s a more appropriate score for a film with a much more personal scope, and in many ways it is Reznor’s most mature score to date. That being said, as an album listening experience, it is much less consistently thrilling than previous works.

But what it may lack in ambition, the score for “Gone Girl” certainly makes up for with pure emotional resonance. The music is substantially less cold than “Dragon Tattoo,” and much more involved with the film’s characters than the somewhat detached “Social Network” soundtack, which focused more on thematic content and the creative process. “Technically, Missing” has a powerful sense of sorrow – anguish even – behind its simple keyboard melody and guitar shredding. And “Just Like You” is perhaps the most beautiful piece Reznor has ever composed, its slow synth humming creating a mist of melancholy which, roughly halfway through, parts to reveal a gorgeous piano, its notes as fragile as a long-past memory.

What makes the “Gone Girl” score so effective is how, much like the story of the film, it manages to masterfully shift between beauty and ugliness – for every “Just Like You,” there is a counterpoint like “The Way He Looks At Me,” whose guttural mechanisms clunk along without an ounce of empathy. And yet, nearly every track has a hint of the other side of things: “The Way He Looks At Me” has a small moment of ambient respite, as if briefly remembering something that is now lost. And ambient pieces such as “Like Home” utilize warbling John Carpenter synths that drone on in beautiful, swooning melodies that are systematically, coldly drown out by what starts as the smallest hum of dissonance. The interplay between the two allows the music to take on a sort of double identity, reflecting the themes of the film.

At first listen, “What Have We Done To Each Other?” sounds empty yet peaceful, maybe soothing, with just a hint of mystery at its core. But by the time the track resurfaces, this time as the somehow more unsettlingly titled “What Will We Do?”, that gently humming ambiance morphs into something that nearly resembles what came before, but only a sickening approximation. The same treatment is given to the other central theme of the score, “Sugar Storm,” which arrives near the end of the score, sounding ever-so-slightly deformed, and ending on such an ironic note that it’s almost funny (its use in the film is, albeit pitch-fucking-black funny).

“Gone Girl” is arguably Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ weakest score, but using language like “weak” is incredibly disingenuous. This is still an excellent soundtrack that strengthens the thematic content of its film, giving audience members added depth to dig into if they are so inclined. It’s just not as great a standalone listening experience as their prior scores. “Gone Girl” is a film so heavy on plot, and the specific details of said plot, that there is little room for the score to breathe. You can hear this during the film itself – the music is played much softer in the mix than previous Fincher films – and occasionally it almost sounds like the tracks are fighting for room between lines of dialogue.

That said, however, there are moments where the score gets some alone time with Fincher’s imagery, to remind us exactly what an excellent audio/visual pair they make. Chief among these moments can be heard in the track “Consummation,” (whose title is a very sick joke with a disturbingly accurate double meaning, given its context in the film) which accumulates an almost unbearable tension over time, culminating in thunderclaps of static that climb out from within the noise, reaching almost deafening levels. The film itself uses these crashing waves of sound in conjunction with a pulsing editing technique to achieve perhaps the most horrific scene Fincher has ever shot.

Overall, the score for “Gone Girl” works incredibly well to punctuate the key moments in the film, and its more traditional use of the leitmotif throughout is a smart choice, given the circumnavigational nature of the film’s plot. Even if it doesn’t quite rise to the level that Reznor and Ross’ previous two scores did, it expands on their compositional range quite a bit, both in terms of sound and also in their ability to effectively score without dialogue-free montages to work within. The composer pair and Fincher are still one of the best matches in cinema, and one can only hope the relationship remains half as fruitful as it has already been.