Hildur Guðnadóttir was the first female composer to win a Golden Globe for her original score for Joker in 2020. This opened up many doors for her, but the Icelandic composer was very selective in her choices. She picked two projects: Todd Field’s psychological drama Tár which is a portrait of a highly successful orchestra conductor and composer whose world starts to fall apart, and Sally Polley’s adaptation of Miriam Toew’s novel Women Talking which is about an isolated religious community of resilient women who are dealing with the aftermath of sexual assault perpetrated by the community’s men.

If nominated for both entries, Guðnadóttir would be the first woman to receive two nominations in the category of Best Original Score in the same year. We spoke to her via Zoom from her hotel room in Los Angeles where she is currently doing publicity for both projects.

You probably had a lot of offers after winning a Golden Globe and an Oscar for your score in Joker. What made you pick Women Talking?

I was very drawn to Sarah’s work. I think she is a wonderful artist and activist. She approaches everything she does with such openness and softness and fearlessness. She is unafraid to take on difficult subjects. She does not shy away from them and she does it without violence, which I think is very inspiring. It is important to have voices like hers. She is not silent and she is open.

Women Talking is based on a novel by Miriam Toew and the story is about eight female trauma survivors in a religious colony. What was it about the story that appealed to you?

The story is heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time. It is energizing. It is an important input in the times that we are living in today as a community and what we are seeing that is happening with women today – both in the United States and Iran and the #MeToo movement. We are experiencing big movements for women these days and I think Women Talking is a beautiful and important input in that discussion.

Do you pick your projects with your heart rather than thinking about them as a smart career choice?

Absolutely. For me, I never made music for any need or want for the spotlight, fame or money. Those are trivial things for me and have never been my driving force. I have always been drawn to music and it is one of the most important things in my life and I have dedicated most of my life to music and the process of making music. It is very important to me that I honor and nurture and protect my creative process, so it is important to me that when I create music for something, I need to feel invested in it and I need to feel connected to the people, the subject and the story that I am working on.

The score for Women Talking is mainly guitar-driven, and in spite of the subject matter being rather dark, the music is fairly light. Why did you make this choice?

That was a very conscious decision on Sarah’s behalf because when I first read the script, I was very angry and very sad. The first days I intended to work on the score, I was paralyzed with anger. I had days where I would just cry on behalf of these women and what they went through. I could not believe that there could be such evil, that human beings could do something as terrible to other human beings. So my immediate reaction was to write something angry and that is also the direction I am more at home with. But it was important for Sarah that the music was a driving force of hope and forward movement, so I had to rethink my feelings about the film and also how I react to my environment with difficult subjects.

It is a film about women standing together. How involved were you with the actors in this film?

Sadly, I did not get to go on set. It was during Covid and I was in Berlin and they shot the film in Canada. I worked very closely with the editor and Sarah, and the music really informed the editing a lot, the way the music was formalized. It was very wonderful. I resonated very well with Sarah.

You also wrote the score for Tár which is very subtle. How would describe it?

It is kind of unsettling and works in a very delicate way, almost as if you have the feeling of something happening without being able to put your finger on what exactly it is. It is like there is a ghost in the room and you can feel it is there but you cannot see it. It is invisible but very present. I think we all have experienced this feeling and I think it is interesting because the film is working on so many different layers. But the way that Todd sets up the thrilling factor in the film – the exciting and otherworldly – he turns it into almost being a horror film. It happens so delicately and you don’t quite understand why you are sitting on the edge of the seat and it is very disturbing and the music is a great part of that. 

There were also various phases of creating music for the film. What were they?

Apart from the score itself, I wrote the music that Lydia Tár is writing in the film. I also wrote a lot of music to reflect the inner tempo of the characters, so we went through the whole film and set tempo marks everywhere so we knew how they were moving and creating throughout the film. We came to a conclusion that Cate was moving in hundred and twenty beats per minute and Sophie was moving in sixty beats per minute. I wrote music to accompany that for them to listen to on set and this is music that the audience never hears. But it was important for us as filmmakers that we were on the same page with the inner music. When you are writing music, a lot of that process goes on internally. You hear the music that you are working on constantly in your head and that affects how you are in the world, your demeanor and your mood.

You worked very closely with Cate Blanchett who plays the composer and conductor Lydia Tár. What is it like to work this closely with an actor?

It was so exciting to get to work with her. In my opinion, she is one of the greats. She is an actor of a caliber that we very rarely get to see and she is an extraordinary person. She just dives so deep into what she is doing. For this film, she learned to play the piano and how to conduct, and the power that she brings to this role is just phenomenal. It was just a real treat of a lifetime to be able to go on this journey with her and do such a deep character study. It was also because it is something that is close to my heart. It is not like we are observing carpentry that I have no knowledge about. It is about the thing in the world that I care the most about, that I have dedicated my life to, and it was fun to get to dive into that with such extraordinary people like Cate and Todd.