HARPA Nominated 2022 for his score for Christina Rosendahl's film THE GOOD TRAITOR
NOMINATION TEXT
Jonas Struck's music for Christina Rosendahl's "The Good Traitor" is an untraditional score, which puts modern Nordic music to a story about events during World War II with great skill. The film makes room for the music, it's been written into the script, and Jonas Struck takes advantage of this to competently convey atmospheres and emotions, and to define parallel storylines in the complex narrative. The music elegantly avoids obvious clichés, and subtly contributes to build-ups and expectations, and is generally well-disposed. The music has a clear purpose in this film.
The melodic motifs are simple and beautiful, and Jonas Struck manages to make expressive variations throughout the film. The use of choir and electronics is both celestial and Nordic - this is not a typical score for a period drama, and the film is unusual within the genre, with its frequent slow-motion effects and oblique camera angles, and here the music really helps blowing the dust of the past away, to make the film feel very present.
There's a clear feeling that the collaboration between director and composer was established early in the production, and that the team behind the film is a group of artists with a long shared experience - a strong factor in how the images and music converge so powerfully.
An excellent and personal film score - inventive and different.
Jonas Struck's music for Christina Rosendahl's "The Good Traitor" is an untraditional score, which puts modern Nordic music to a story about events during World War II with great skill. The film makes room for the music, it's been written into the script, and Jonas Struck takes advantage of this to competently convey atmospheres and emotions, and to define parallel storylines in the complex narrative. The music elegantly avoids obvious clichés, and subtly contributes to build-ups and expectations, and is generally well-disposed. The music has a clear purpose in this film.
The melodic motifs are simple and beautiful, and Jonas Struck manages to make expressive variations throughout the film. The use of choir and electronics is both celestial and Nordic - this is not a typical score for a period drama, and the film is unusual within the genre, with its frequent slow-motion effects and oblique camera angles, and here the music really helps blowing the dust of the past away, to make the film feel very present.
There's a clear feeling that the collaboration between director and composer was established early in the production, and that the team behind the film is a group of artists with a long shared experience - a strong factor in how the images and music converge so powerfully.
An excellent and personal film score - inventive and different.
|
JONAS STRUCK
Award-winning composer Jonas Struck is a graduate from the prestigious Royal Academy of Music in Copenhagen. He has worked for more than ten years as a film composer scoring and supervising various Scandinavian feature films, national TV-drama series, and a large number of documentaries. Struck has scored music for the epic tennis drama ”Borg McEnroe” starring Shia Le Beouf, political cold-war thriller “The Idealist”, the Sci-Fi movie ”Qeda – Man Divided”, the American TV-drama ”Conrad & Michelle- If Words Could Kill” and latest Netflix TV series “Ragnarok” season 2. Struck’s sound is a mix of Nordic electronic soundscapes and organic instruments with strong signature themes that sums up the DNA of the movie. LATEST FILMS Woodcutter Story, Director Mikko Myllylahti (Beo Film 2022) Kagefabrikken, Director Christian Lollike (Tales Inc. 2022) Ragnarok season 2 (Netflix TV series 2021) Solutions, Director Pernille Rose Grønkjær (Danish Documentary 2021) Vores Mand i Amerika/ The Good Traitor, Director Christina Rosendahl (Nimbus Film 2020) Conrad & Michelle- If Words Could Kill, Director Stephen Tolkin (Sony Pictures US 2018) Borg McEnroe, Director Janus Metz (SF Film 2017) Qeda- Man Divided, Director Max Kestner (SF Film 2017) Jonas Struck Showreel 2021 from Jonas Struck on Vimeo. |
ABOUT THE FILM’S SCORE
The score represents a mesh of an exotic melancholy and a foreboding, electronic musical universe. The music underscores the ambassador’s exotic lifestyle and is partly inspired by some of Kauffmann’s earlier journeys to remote locations in the Far East. Artists such as Eden Ahbez and Martin Denny have inspired tracks such as Radio Speech, Let’s Go Out and Tell Us About China. When the good life at the Washington embassy’s swimming pool is interrupted by the Nazi’s onward march in Europe, the music becomes twisted, threatening and stifling. This can be heard in tracks such as Invasion of Denmark, Conversation with Berle and The War in Europe. Here, early electronic instruments such as the ondes Martenot are utilized in tandem with waterphones and disturbingly distorted cello notes. The music simultaneously underpins the ill-fated relationship between Kauffmann and his wife, Charlotte. The music’s melancholy underpins the tensions and problems that stem from the couple’s problematic romance, which ends disastrously! Val Kill, Charlotte, Zilla and The Liberation all feature this sense of melancholy, which is supported by the Budapest Art Orchestra’s 40 string players and choir. Composer Jonas Struck has worked closely with director Christina Rosendahl and sound designer Peter Albrechtsen in order to create a unique score and soundtrack, in which the borderline between sound design and music is frequently blurred. It’s a film in which the main characters rarely express their feelings with words, whereby the music often becomes a character’s true, inner voice. |
Jonas Struck - Harpa nominated 2019 for his score for Max Kestners feature film, QEDA - Man Divided
|
One has rarely experienced Copenhagen in her summery dress more alienated and latently dystopic than in Max Kestner’s ”QEDA - Man Divided” with score composed by Jonas Struck.
The protagonist Fang Rung (Karsten Bjørnlund) leaves the ruined and ravaged Copenhagen in 2095 AD to go back in time to our contemporary Copenhagen. The film has a dual focus. It portrays a dystopian nightmarish future: our world devastated by climate change – where time travelling agents are sent back to right the wrongs of our time, to change history for the better. The second focus dwell upon the inner emotional life of our divided protagonist – highlighted by the recurring voice-over directed at his young daughter – bedridden suffering from salt poisoning in future Copenhagen. Both narratives are supported and enhanced through the outstanding score by Struck. Looking at our well-known present world through the eyes of the time traveler, colored by the score, suddenly our familiar civilization and world becomes extraordinary – the lost paradise.The timbres of the score circles around a core of ominous, shrill, yet curiously fragile synth textures. Now and then enhanced by warmer acoustic string instruments and – particularly towards the end of the film – intensified by the introduction of a church organ. Often, we hear a multi layered pulsation in the music: in the future realm as the deep rusty heartbeat of a collapsing civilization; in our present time as fragile outbursts of happiness as our time travelling protagonist realizes the profound miracle of pure drinking water falling from the sky as rain. In a significant scene of the film, a future female head of state is portrayed as a decadent and corrupt political leader – while the musical score seamlessly transforms into a slow and weird cover version of the 80’s pop hit “Tainted Love” – performed by singer Mette Lindberg. The transition from score to futuristic pop song and back to score is compelling and brilliantly composed by Struck. The very same song, in a remix by Vladislav Delay, accompanies the end credits. |
|