The EE BAFTA Film Awards were bestowed last night at London’s Southbank and there were stars as far as the eye could see. The biggest winners of the evening were Vatican thriller Conclave (winning both Best Film and Best British Film) and The Brutalist, Brady Corbet’s riveting post-Holocaust drama starring Adrien Brody. Both Corbet and Brody won coveted BAFTAs, alongside the film’s cinematographer, Lol Crawley, and composer Daniel Blumberg. The composer beat fellow nominees Kris Bowers (The Wild Robot), Volker Bertelmann (Conclave), Camille & Clément Ducol (Emilia Pérez) and Robin Carolan (Nosferatu).
Blumberg’s original score is just that, it’s a towering construction with many unique parts, each one integral to the structure of the experience. From its brazen, somewhat disorienting Overture through heady jazz sequences (performed live on set), dreamlike solo piano lines (often played on prepared piano by John Tilbury) and Axel Dörner’s unnerving trumpet blasts, The Brutalist is a memorable listen both in and out of the film. There’s an improvisatory element to some of the music, which creates a feeling of explorative creation and, again, disorientation.
You feel that perhaps most fully during the Intermission, which features pianist John Tilbury seemingly feeling his way through what becomes the score’s main melodic thread. A fully realised version of what he is working through follows, on piano and brass.
Who is Daniel Blumberg?
Blumberg is a British artist, musician and composer who works across forms, including drawing and film, as well as (of course) music. He was the guitarist and frontman of the indie band ‘Yuck’ and a founding member of the group ‘Cajun Dance Party’. In more recent years he has released solo albums of his own music and later turned to composing for film. The Brutalist is not his first score for writer/director Brady Corbet, the pair working together on the 2019 short performance film GYUTO. That featured music by Blumberg and his duo (or GUO) partner, sax player Seymour Wright.
Blumberg won a 2022 Ivor Novello award for his score for Mona Fastvold’s The World to Come, and his score for The Brutalist is nominated for an Oscar at the forthcoming 97th Academy Awards. His BAFTA win is a strong sign that the American Academy voters may follow suit… all will be revealed at the Oscars on Sunday 2 March.
For a full list of this years EE BAFTA Film Awards winners visit bafta.org
The Brutalist is in UK cinemas now and you can listen to Daniel Blumberg’s score is released by Sony and can be heard wherever you enjoy your music.