Wave Scene, Interstellar (2019)

Image source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Hf_XkgE1d0

Mountains by Hans Zimmer

Rating:10/10

Hans Zimmer is by far one of my favorite film composers, so I’m going to let everyone know this entry is going to be bias. Although I could talk about the wonders of film scoring that is the Interstellar (2014) soundtrack all day, I decided to simply pick one scene to talk about instead. Mountains is the piece that plays during the scene on the water planet, Miller. Despite the piece being titled Mountains, as the crew soon realizes, there are no mountains on Miller, only enormous waves.

My favorite (very small yet incredibly smart) detail about this piece is the sound of a clock ticking every 1.25 seconds. At the beginning of the scene, viewers are reminded of the fact that every hour spent on Miller is equivalent to seven years on Earth. If you do the math, you realize that every time the clock ticks in the score, about one day passes on Earth. This small detail makes an incredibly large impact on rewatching the scene. Already, the music and the situation alone makes the scene intense and heart-racing, but knowing that each tick is one day on Earth puts everything in perspective.

Hans Zimmer is a master when it comes to lining up his scores to the scenes they play in. Mountains starts off quiet as our crew is simply looking around the planet. The eerie ticking is all that starts the piece, bass instruments and strings slowly interjecting as the stakes get higher for the crew. Around the 1:30 mark, more instruments enter. They crescendo and speed up until the loudest, most startling moment of the song plays at 2:05 with the entrance of the organ and the rest of the orchestra. In the scene, this loud moment comes as the crew realizes a massive wave is upon them.

Until the end of the piece, similar loud beats are played, followed by more quiet gaps. Though the name of the piece is Mountains, because of this pattern there is still a lilting feeling that is reminiscent of the ebb and flow of waves.

Zimmer is also a master of integrating important motives back into his pieces. In Mountains, we hear the motive, albeit chopped up, introduced in the earlier piece Day One. The simple chord progression and melody that anyone who knows interstellar knows. It’s a beautiful and simple melody, yet in Mountains it is intense and a little scary, which I absolutely love.

For me, Hans Zimmer’s musical genius and unique style makes the entire Interstellar soundtrack a masterpiece. The wave scene would not be nearly as amazing as it is had it not been for this amazing score.