美国国家公共电台 NPR Inside Daniel Lopatin's Score For Safdie Brothers' Film 'Uncut Gems'（在线收听）

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In the new movie "Uncut Gems," Adam Sandler plays a New York jeweler and gambler always out for the next score. It's a cinematic panic attack. So why, reporter Tim Greiving asks, does it feature a cosmic New Age score?

TIM GREIVING, BYLINE: One of the first things that jumps out in "Uncut Gems" amidst the din of New York's Diamond District, the hectic habitat of Adam Sandler's loud-mouth Howard Ratner, is this meditative analog synthesizer score.

(SOUNDBITE OF DANIEL LOPATIN'S "THE BALLAD OF HOWIE BLING")

GREIVING: The composer is Daniel Lopatin, also known as Oneohtrix Point Never. He first worked with the directors, brothers Josh and Benny Safdie, on their 2017 film "Good Time."

DANIEL LOPATIN: I think they expect the score to always have a sort of fantastical quality to it, but they also expect the film to have a very realistic quality to it. And then in that contrast, you pretty much understand our collaboration.

GREIVING: One of their big inspirations for the "Uncut Gems" score was Vangelis, the Greek synthesizer wizard who Josh Safdie calls one of the great cosmic conductors of our time.

LOPATIN: His point of view on music and its transcendent qualities and medicinal qualities almost is always an inspiration, but in particular with this film, which I view as a cosmic movie.

GREIVING: "Uncut Gems" hurdles along with Howard Ratner's compulsion to gamble, to bet his winnings instead of paying off debts, to chase down the next high. A lot of the score is counterintuitively New Age - well, counterintuitive to anyone but Josh and Benny Safdie.

JOSH SAFDIE: There's this sequence in the film where we used meditation bowls and chanting that are the - musically, they're used to calm the spirit. We're using it juxtaposed with a hectic scenario where people are trapped inside of a vestibule. And I think that juxtaposition is adding to the tension...

BENNY SAFDIE: For sure.

J SAFDIE: ...Because you're hearing this music that should be calming, but it's actually anxiety-inducing

B SAFDIE: It's like when you tell somebody who's angry, hey, calm down.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GREIVING: Daniel Lopatin's score features an eclectic ensemble of old-school synthesizers, Mellotron-style flutes, saxophone solos and an eight-person choir.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE BALLAD OF HOWIE BLING")

UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing, unintelligible).

GREIVING: It's not all calm, though. There are some panicky moments in the score that match Howard's ever-escalating dilemma.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GREIVING: Lopatin recalled an NPR story he heard about the importance of sleep on proteins in the brain.

LOPATIN: They need hours and hours to do their thing to loosen up so your cells are loose. It always appeared to me to be, like, a very artistic metaphor. Like, if you want something, you feel tight and anxious, then cluster things together like a unpacked protein.

GREIVING: The object at the heart of the film is a black opal from Ethiopia which Howard is banking everything on. Daniel Lopatin saw that opal, that uncut gem, as a metaphor.

LOPATIN: Are we dealing with this sort of material latticework of the city and Howard navigating his logistical problems and his maladies and his freakouts?

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

LOPATIN: Or are we dealing with the spirit of the film, which is that Howard might be a schlimazel or whatever, but he's also, like all of us, just passing through and affecting things as we pass through our lives, so that new agey-kind of aspect of it rubbing up against the really, really kind of severe, like, weirdly jazzy quality of the city.

GREIVING: So if watching this movie gives you palpitations, just listen to the score and relax. For NPR News, I'm Tim Greiving.