Jul 29 2010'Inception' Score Also Read the Dream-Levels-Slow-Things-Down Rulebook
Soundtrack spoilers! Holy cats, guys, did you realize the big "Bum bum! Dreams!" part of Hans Zimmer's Inception score is largely Édith Piaf’s “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien”--the song used to jolt our dreammasters--slowed down? Just like how it would be in deeper dream levels! If you did realize that, congratulations on either having well-trained ears or watching the video earlier in the week. If not, watch the video now and mind-applaud how clever that is.
Below the cut, Zimmer himself responds, telling us that we're jerks for not realizing it sooner.
From the New York Times (via /Film):
[Hans Zimmer] said the sonic similarity was not only intentional but also the one element of an enigmatic movie “that wasn’t supposed to be a secret.”Speaking of the viral video, Mr. Zimmer excitedly said: “I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it. I was surprised how long it took them to figure it out.”
The musical cue, Mr. Zimmer said, “was our big signpost” in the film of its characters’ moving from one level of dreaming (or reality) into another. “It was like a drawing of a huge finger,” he said, “saying, O.K., different time.”
Mr. Zimmer said the idea for this musical game had begun with Mr. Nolan, the film’s director and writer.
“He had the Édith Piaf always written in the script, the ‘da-da, da-da,’ ” he said, imitating the cadence of that song. “It was like huge foghorns over a city, and afterward you would maybe figure out that they were related.”
Technically, Mr. Zimmer said, his score is not a slowing-down of the French song, which was composed by Charles Dumont and recorded by Piaf in 1960, but is constructed from a single manipulated beat from it.
“Just for the game of it,” Mr. Zimmer said, “all the music in the score is subdivisions and multiplications of the tempo of the Édith Piaf track. So I could slip into half-time; I could slip into a third of a time. Anything could go anywhere. At any moment I could drop into a different level of time.”
And did you realize the Shrek soundtrack is all variations of a single beat from Smashmouth's All Star?
Reader Comments
1. xuc - July 29, 2010 12:46 PM
You people don't even know who Édith Piaf is.
2. Colleen - July 29, 2010 12:51 PM
Who's "you people"? And what does that have to do with anything?
3. Barking Bud - July 29, 2010 1:44 PM
She ISn't...she was.
4. che-che - July 29, 2010 1:46 PM
i might knnow who edith piaf is, but i have eaten rice pilaf...its miiiighty tasty.
5. che-che - July 29, 2010 1:48 PM
sorry for the terrible grammar i am ashamed. prematurely hit that post button.
"i might not know" is what i meant to say.
6. James Grabowski - July 29, 2010 1:53 PM
My girlfriend noticed it in the theater. She also thought it was funny because Marion Cotillard played Piaf in "La vie en rose"
7. Susan - July 29, 2010 2:21 PM
i have eaten rice pilaf...its mighty tasty.
8. Quase - July 29, 2010 2:28 PM
@6 tell your girlfriend i want to marry her...
9. lameo - July 29, 2010 3:31 PM
Okay, so what is the significance of the original score in reference to Inception's plot? IS there one, or is the video just trying to point out the sampling?
10. lameo - July 29, 2010 3:32 PM
What does "the song used to jolt our dreammasters" mean? I am so confused.
11. che-che - July 29, 2010 4:12 PM
they should have just gotten fatboy slim to do it. the likes to take 2 bars of music cycle it. then slow it down real slow and then really fast till it stutters crazily and annoyingly. it would have been awesome!!!!!
12. Hamish Fox - July 29, 2010 6:33 PM
This is news? Seriously, how the fuck could you not realise that? What, was everyone who went to see this movie asleep?
13. Mark - July 29, 2010 6:33 PM
If you have seen the Oviedo you would recognize the sing as being used on the dreamers to indicate when a kick was coming in the dream world. They would place the headphones on whoever dream they were in so everyone could hear it, and they would know that they had to get out.
They took that and the fact that as you go deeper into each level therre is a time disparity, in that a minute in the current level may be ten hours in the next dream level, they mentioned how it slows down exponentially.
So, when you put the headphones on in the real world, in the third or fourth level in it is so slowed down that it becomes the ominous horns that everyone associated with the movie.
14. CinemaObsessed.com - July 30, 2010 11:01 AM
"the the music in Incepetion..." geez people can't re-read their own shit anymore...
15. Freddy Krueger - July 30, 2010 10:59 PM
welcome to primetime, bitches!
16. Nick - July 31, 2010 10:02 PM
Did anyone else think that using an Edith Piaf song was a reference to Marion Cotillard playing her in La Vie en Rose?
17. Skriss - August 2, 2010 7:38 AM
I agree with @Hamish Fox. I remember at least two or three times in the film where the song is played to Cob and the others, and in the next scene they can all hear it in the dream in its slowed down, epic movie score state.
"See what they did there?" umm...yea...now how about you go back to trying to figure out what the matrix is, you moron.
18. dahghda - August 2, 2010 11:06 AM
the matrix is what happens when you slow down edith's music then make a glitch hop brain dance remix and pump that into a dream after you've gone down at least 10 levels. Or the matrix is when you notice that everything around you has been memed.
19. Drew - August 2, 2010 2:11 PM
I have reason to believe the theme to Twin Peaks, "Falling" by Julee Cruise, is just Little Eva/Grand Funk Railroad/Kylie Minogue's "The Locomotion" slowed down.
20. meme - August 2, 2010 2:35 PM
Yeah I heard it but I didn't think it was a big deal or even an ah-ha moment. They played it at regular speed when they were awake planning the session. Then you heard it slowed down echoing in the mountains. Okay. Leo Di Caprio is dreamy? Care to discuss that too? Or did no one notice that either?
21. frank - August 2, 2010 3:26 PM
I wonder what other old girly French songs sound epic when they're hella slowed down?