Composer Hildur Guðnadóttir, who won an Oscar with “Joker,” is already deep into “The Bell Jar.”
Sarah Polley’s Sylvia Plath adaptation, which recently wrapped, will give pop icon Billie Eilish her first starring role, while offering the composer a new kind of creative partnership.
“[Working with a fellow Oscar-winning musician like Eilish] makes a huge difference,” Guðnadóttir tells Variety. “You know she understands the process that goes into writing music, so what you write can really resonate with her.”
Building on a relationship forged on 2022’s Oscar-winning “Women Talking,” Guðnadóttir joined Polley’s latest project early, writing themes the filmmaker could play on set. She was equally keen to connect with Eilish before the singer stepped in front of the camera.
“We talked about what we envisioned for the music, and how we could translate what Sylvia experiences into it,” Guðnadóttir says. “For me, the core of Plath’s writing is that she’s searching for identity. She keeps asking, ‘Who am I?’ and then uses her writing to understand that. Billie, Sarah and I have been exploring how we hear that, how to translate it into music, and what music Sylvia herself might have been listening to.”
Guðnadóttir calls the film a career highlight.
“It’s one of the most exciting projects I’ve ever done,” she says. “Sarah and I are good friends, so getting to tell this story with her is amazing. I think it’s one of the most amazing books ever written.”
“You can feel it in every word Sylvia Plath writes,” she continues. “This burning need and yearning to find herself through her writing. I’ve been reading a lot of her work, including her books, essays and poems, and it’s vast. People tend to remember the drama of her story, that she had mental health struggles and a sad end. But her writing is so full of life, creativity and energy, and that’s what people tend to forget. I really hope this film can bring that back to center and celebrate her magnificent way of living.”
Variety caught up with the composer at this year’s World Soundtrack Awards in Ghent, where she was guest of honor. Hours before her trip to Belgium, Guðnadóttir was still mixing “Enemies,” the Ari Aster-produced A24 thriller. Directed by Henry Dunham and starring Jeremy Allen White and Austin Butler, the Chicago-shot cop drama let her play with urban ambient sounds.
“I find it really interesting how the sounds of the city work with the film,” she says. “I’m working a lot with environmental textures and city sounds, and how they can relate to the film’s music. Listening is always at the heart, along with my curiosity.”
Guðnadóttir would also love to return to the “28 Years Later” franchise, whenever the next installment arrives. At the World Soundtrack Awards, she described the “nerve-wracking” experience of watching the first in the new series, scored by Young Fathers, after finishing her work on Nia DaCosta’s “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.”
“I never got to hear a single note or see a single frame of [Danny Boyle’s ‘28 Years Later’] while I was working [on ‘The Bone Temple’],” she says.
“I kept asking whether we should have some connective tissue between the scores, but it was a deliberate decision to keep the two completely separate. So when part one came out, I went to the cinema with everyone else. I was sitting there thinking, ‘Please work together, please work together,’ because I had already delivered my part and couldn’t change a thing. It was funny, but nerve-wracking!”
The description could apply to the series as a whole.
“The amazing thing about these stories, and about [‘The Bone Temple’] in particular, is that they look very gory, aggressive and violent, but at the same time, they’re very human, soft and funny,” she says. “I think part two is hilarious. So the question was how could the music amplify that.”
DaCosta wanted strings, while Guðnadóttir sought to counter their ethereal quality with something more grounded. Taking the film’s title literally, she turned to an unlikely source for percussion.
“I have a friend who runs a hamburger place just outside of Berlin,” she explains. “She has a good relationship with her butcher, so I got a deal to take the leftover bones. All the percussion in the film is made from bones. The shoulder bones made interesting clapping percussion, and the bigger ones suited deeper beating percussion. The smaller ones were better suited to flutes.”
Bur first, she had to prepare her instruments.
“I do everything myself, and that includes boiling the bones,” Guðnadóttir says with a smile. “I’m very hands-on.”