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Go see Project Hail Mary on the biggest screen you can find

I couldn’t help it. I went back for a second screening of Project Hail Mary. It’s that good. This time I chose the biggest screen I could find short of IMAX (I had to settle for 24 metres wide - not the 32 metres of IMAX). Importantly the massive screen was matched with a superb sound system. And it made all the difference, because this film has one of the most remarkable scores I’ve heard in years.

Daniel Pemberton’s score is ethereal, warm and captivating. It is a great work of art in its own right. The two-hour, 38-track composition opens with an echoing, twinkly percussive instrument followed by an ethereal choir singing a four-note theme, and builds from there into something vast and communal. On a big system with proper low-end, it envelops you.

“It’s a very unusual score. There have been lots of fantastic scores for big sci-fi films, but they’ve rarely had to do anything that’s got humour as such a huge part of the score, or lightness, friendship. There’s a lot of complicated, different emotional beats that the score has to contend with.” — Daniel Pemberton, Composer

He’s not wrong. This isn’t Interstellar. It isn’t 2001. Those scores never had to carry comedy, friendship and intimacy alongside awe. Pemberton had to find a musical language that could do all of it, and he did.

At least two-thirds of the movie are set in space, with Ryan Gosling carrying the movie almost single-handedly for much of it. As such the dialogue is minimal and the score has to fill the void. And it does so magnificently. At one point there is no sound at all for around 20 seconds. The silence is deafening and the audience is completely captivated and silent.

Built from elemental materials

Pemberton replaced synthesisers with physical instrumentation. The ondes martenot, a glass harmonica and a cristal baschet feature prominently, giving the score a big, alien-sounding character that still feels personal. He used steel drums, woodblocks, and clapping and stomping from schoolchildren at Wells Cathedral. Much of the percussion is literally connected to the human body.

The score’s most distinctive element is a squeaky water tap that Pemberton recorded and transformed into a fragile, slightly unstable instrument. The sound mirrors the film’s emotional arc, a character moving from isolation toward connection and gradually expands across the score.

The brief was two words

Lord and Miller gave Pemberton a two-word brief: “Hope Core." The challenge was balancing the film’s massive scale with the intimacy of a two-character story. Pemberton had already worked with the directors on both Spider-Verse films, so the trust was there. He delivered something that sounds like nothing else in mainstream sci-fi.

SLUG magazine said the score alone would be worth the IMAX ticket price. The Hollywood Reporter called it a score of “moving solemnity and celestial dimensions.”

For audiophiles a vinyl edition is coming from Mutant in August on 3x 140gm gold vinyl with extra material not on the digital release, plus a zoetrope vinyl of the needle-drop soundtrack.

Gosling deserves an Oscar or two for this. I am sure the Film Score will take out many awards too.

Do yourself a favour. Watch Project Hail Mary at the biggest, loudest cinema you can find. The story is extraordinary. The score elevates it into something you feel physically. A second viewing on a proper system isn’t indulgence. It’s the way this film was meant to be experienced. Can I hold off from a third viewing? Probably not - but I will wait until the Director’s Cut drops at IMAX.

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