Goodness Daughter
Hildur Guðnadóttir.
Guðnadóttir.
It sounds a little like “goodness daughter”.
Remember that name.
Her musical scores for Todd Field’s Tár and Sarah Polley’s Women Talking are both potential nominees for Oscars this year. UPDATE: at the time of writing, this was true, but neither film was nominated.
Although I saw Joker for which Guðnadóttir won the Oscar for Best Original Score in 2020, the first time I fully appreciated her talent was watching Tár.
Who WAS this person sharing the music credits with Gustav Mahler, Edward Elgar and J.S. Bach at the end of the film? Like a game of One Of These Names Is Not Like The Others.
Then over the weekend I saw Women Talking.
The soundtrack for Women Talking hits you from the first measure.
A bell clangs over and over at a strange pitch as unsettling scenes of the aftermath of violent crimes against women plays out on the screen. It is disorienting and attention-focusing.
In an interview on THE CREDITS web site, Guðnadóttir explained where the idea came from ...
In the flashback scenes where we see what actually happened to these women, I experienced that as somehow both a doomsday and a call to prayer, so I just felt that bells were a really good connection to both of those feelings, because bells can sound an alarm or be heard at prayer time, so I thought it was fitting ... because these women are trapped in this situation, in an almost unimaginable way, with their family in a horrifically violent environment. I wanted to create a sense of claustrophobia, a lack of movement. They are stuck, trapped in this place without any power. I can’t imagine how terrifying and inhuman that must be.
This short opening piece with bells is called "Work of Ghosts".
With this one, Guðnadóttir is only warming up.
The next piece, called "Not All Men", is performed on the cello. It is recognizable, and echoes something from the Joker. It is dark, signature Guðnadóttir - if that's a thing. I have been playing cello for almost 20 years and there are chords in there that I’m pretty sure I have never heard before.
The next piece - "Always" - clicks into to the central composer/musician collaboration of the soundtrack. It is performed by Guðnadóttir’s Icelandic compatriot, friend and bass guitarist Skúli Sverrisson.
Further along in the interview in THE CREDITS she describes her motivation for such simple instrumental orchestration (bells, solo cello, base guitar) this way ...
Specifically, when you’re dealing with true events, I think it’s important to try to be as honest as you possibly can, because there are people that have actually lived these events, and you don’t want to over-dramatize them, like waltz in with a string orchestra and taiko drums.
As for me, I love a string orchestra and taiko drums backing a big scene, but I also know exactly what she is saying. That's not what Women Talking is about.
In addition to her Oscar for Joker, Guðnadóttir won an Emmy and a Grammy for scoring the HBO series Chernobyl. She only needs a Tony to join the EGOT club! Given her age (40 years old) she has plenty of time for that.
Because Film Composers are a lesser known category than say Directors or Actors, to me it seems Guðnadóttir is somewhat under-recognized. Yes, she has won some big awards, but I’m a music person and not one of my friends has ever spoken her name to me unprompted. That needs to change!
You can learn more about “The Hildur-ness” at her website here https://www.hildurness.com
End Note: The unfamiliar letter ð in Guðnadóttir is called an "eth". It is the fifth letter of the Icelandic alphabet. Its transliteration equivalent is the letter "d" but it is pronounced more like the "th" in English words like “other”, “then” and “smooth”. The linguistics word for this type of phonetic is a "dental fricative" because the tongue and teeth are both needed to sound it. Yet another reason to get familiar with her work and talk about it - her surname is fun to pronounce. Oh my goothness.
