Snowpiercer (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Marco Beltrami was one of the first young American composers to regularly score foreign films, where “you are freer to actually create something new,” he says. For Korean director Joon-Ho Bong’s adaptation of a French graphic novel about a postapocalyptic future where mankind survives circling an icebound globe on an aging train, the Jerry Goldsmith protégé created three central themes. “The first was the perpetual motion [train] theme, which I had to figure out early,” explains Marco. “The second was a theme to represent the frozen world outside the train: a world that was foreign to the people on the train yet also familiar to them, like the remembrance of a past memory. The third was based on the emotional substance of the characters, which to me, was represented by Yona. This became Yona’s theme, which is woven throughout the film. Every cue was guided by these three themes.”