Feeling the angst of the artist compels me to comment that, ‘Well, there’s always one’ – which gets a laugh – but also raises a more intriguing point. As an artist whose work represents a vital part of this creative whole, the release of that into the world must be nerve-shreddingly tense.
“Yeah, but that’s fine, you know, that’s just the way it is. I was very anxious about it coming out and seeing what the responses would be, because, like I say, I can’t really get perspective on it, so…I’m thinking I’m happy with it. We’ll see how it stands the test of time.
“I think, since I’ve been doing film scores, I’ve kind of always dreamed about a film score being received in the way that an artist’s regular albums are, and I think bands like Mogwai really brought that audience to film music. Perhaps I was coming the other way, so there’s that common ground, you know? I mean say Johann Johansson does a score, or say Max Richter – they are artistic expressions and they live outside the films, the way Mogwai’s has done with The Returned. It has to work in tandem with film, but also it has to have a life outside, and I think an audience has sort of grown into that over the past ten years – and that’s fantastic that music from a film can sort of excite people, I suppose.”
The separation of soundtrack from film is an interesting idea – particularly since his score for The Fountain seemed to get better reviews for itself than the film did as a whole.
“Well, you know, this is one of the things – Darren makes challenging movies, you know? A lot is about timing, as well. If you were to position The Fountain to come after, say, Malick had done Tree Of Life, and everyone was jerking themselves off over that [laughs]. Or, if it came after Black Swan, when everyone’s getting excited because Darren’s movies can make money now. That film would have been promoted in a very different way. Now, I’m not saying it would have been received any better, but it would have been targeted and promoted in a different way that wasn’t done at the time because the studios didn’t have the balls to do it. But you know, eight years later, or something, there’s a context to it, and you think, ‘You know what? Maybe I would understand that now.’ And obviously, that sounds very arrogant, like, ‘We were ahead of the game,’ or whatever, but that’s what I think art should be doing – it should be asking and challenging – to think about things in a different way. People will go, ‘Ok, Fountain made, like, 10 dollars, but Transformers 7 made a billion, so it must have been the better film.’ And maybe it is to some people but, you know, I think we all know what the truth is.
“We live in a consumerist society now – it’s all about spending and buying and how much money something makes – even if they’ve made something [bad], if it’s made loads of money then that’s ok. It doesn’t even matter if something that made a load of money destroys your livelihood, or destroys the planet – that’s ok because he’s got to make his bottom line. That’s the world we live in now, you know, so it’s important that people stand up and try to do something different – just to make a different option available.”
Noah certainly is a different option, and is also a production that demonstrates how far Aronofsky and his collaborators have come since those early days in 1998, working on Pi. I wonder what the most significant differences are between that early experience and this latest one, from the perspective of writing the music.
“To some degree there’s absolutely no difference. Both were daunting challenges at that period of my life. I mean, I’d never done a film score before, so Pi, to a degree, was a bigger challenge than Noah, because I’ve done it, like, 40 times or something now. I’ve got at least a positive belief that I could possibly do it. The other thing is, things are probably more different with me – I’m probably more arrogant now.
You know, I like to work out what we’re doing and do it. I don’t believe in trying to deviate from the game, because your instincts are right. Trust your instincts, you know? We’ll work and work and work and then some studio comes in and says ‘well, this piece hasn’t really done it for me’, and it’s like ‘Well, this piece isn’t just about this piece – this is about the whole journey of this film’, you know?’ It’s not that I’m not interested in people’s thoughts and stuff, I mean, sometimes I can use it, but as far as I’m concerned, I know….better than you.
And that’s probably a difficult perspective to take on board sometimes, but I just don’t believe in committees. I just don’t believe in compromise, to a degree. I know I’m right more times than I’m wrong, so let me do my job. That’s something that’s probably changed over the years. That’s not to say that I haven’t got lessons to learn – I have, and I’m always interested in hearing what people have to say. But, I like things to move along an – as you say – organic path, and quite often, your gut instinct is correct. So, don’t over-think things, or think things through wrongly or, you know, be swayed. Sometimes you’ve got to remember what it is that you’re doing, and I think that’s the way you get something cohesive and focused. That’s something where you work together as a team along the way, you know? But, in modern movie-making, what happens is you get latecomers to the party who want to throw a….spanner in the works [laughs] I just don’t play well with those sorts of people, really.”
So, with Noah complete and sailing into theatres right now, what’s next for the prolific Mansell – the composer that has delivered over 43 film scores in fifteen years? Once he has finished writing the score for the Morten Tyldum film, The Imitation Game (which stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley), he will head off on a European concert tour. Will audiences get to enjoy some of the Noah score?
“I don’t know yet, I haven’t really figured it out… it’s a 9-piece band, so I don’t know how the size of this score would translate to that line-up, you know? It’s something I’ve got to think about – I’m going to think about it during the summer. We don’t play Black Swan, either, because again it’s sort of a big orchestra piece, and because it’s so based around Swan Lake, obviously, that music really needs to be performed to a certain level. People understand it in a certain kind of way, and I haven’t really had time to figure out whether we can translate it in the right way yet – so that’s up in the air. But, I mean, we cover pretty much everything – it goes from Pi, Requiem, Moon, The Fountain, you know? Stoker, The Wrestler. We want to try and get something new in – Filth, or Noah, or maybe The Imitation Game that I’m doing now – but I don’t know if that’ll be out by then. But, you know, it’s sort of a pretty broad cross-section of my movie stuff.
“We’ll probably come back to the US next spring, I think. It all depends – it’s difficult to schedule, you know, around the films I’m doing, and the band. So, we’re going to do these ones in October, and then we’re sort of thinking about next spring for the US.”
The 9-piece band in question is the Sonos Quartet, who also have a history with Mansell.
“The whole band actually played the Moon score. They’re great, you know? I really enjoy it. It’s good.”
It is good. Very good. And as long as we have passionate artists like Clint Mansell rocking the boat, the vital connection between music and film is in safe hands.
That concludes our interview but I’d like to thank Clint very much for his time. You can check out his latest work in Noah, which is now in theatres.