‘Drive My Car’ Director and Soundtrack Composer on Crafting Film’s Emotional Score: ‘Our Film Language Was Very Similar’
variety.comA.D. Amorosi To complement Japanese director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s grieving, soft-spun vision for “Drive My Car,” which has received four Oscar noms including director and best picture, the choice of composer to create a melodramatic and delicate score was crucial.Enter Eiko Ishibashi, an experimental Japanese multi-instrumentalist whose 2018 “The Dream My Bones Dream” was a turning point in an already decade-long career of scores for theater and short films.Ishibashi’s 2018 album of haunting soundscapes and its electro-acoustic mix of noise, oddball pop, improvisational jazz and minimalist, modern classical music made her a cinematic force equal to Hamaguchi.
The more textural and sweeping aspects of Ishibashi’s bittersweet melodies were an elegant match for Hamaguchi’s vision. “It was a very unique experience for me to be able to create music with relative freedom and enjoyment,” says Ishibashi of her cinematic compositional scope.After being known for crafting blunt, short films since 2001, Japanese director Hamaguchi’s romantic “Asako I & II” of 2018 signaled an aesthetic shift, a turn toward sweeping narratives with shadowy, but tactile, atmospheres.
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