American Beauty

Description

With 14 Oscar nominations, seven Grammy Awards, and an Emmy to his name, Thomas Newman has an unparalleled track record among modern film composers (and even within his own family, which says a lot considering he is the son of Alfred, the brother of David, and the cousin of Randy Newman)! But among all his Oscar-nominated scores – for classics like The Shawshank Redemption, Wall-E, Finding Nemo, Saving Mr. Banks, and The Road to Perdition – his score for the Best Picture American Beauty (the first of his many collaborations with director Sam Mendes) remains his most distinctive. This is because Newman made the bold choice to compose a score almost entirely with percussion instruments, brilliantly intuiting that the lack of melodic resolution in the film's themes would echo and amplify what he called the "moral ambiguity" of the screenplay. The result was an enchanting and entirely original film score that is instantly recognizable to anyone who has seen the film.