Hildur Guðnadóttir Interview: A Haunting in Venice
22Director and star Kenneth Branagh is back for another Agatha Christie mystery in A Haunting in Venice, throwing a supernatural spin on the starry whodunit. In order to capture the eerie atmosphere of a haunted Italian palazzo, Branagh enlisted the craft of Academy Award-winning composer Hildur Guđnadóttir, who spoke with Collider’s Steve Weintraub about her process and how it compared to her work on the Joaquin Phoenix-led Joker, which earned her Iceland’s first-ever Oscar.
A Haunting in Venice, like Branagh’s previous Hercule Poirot features Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile, is chock-full of talent. Set in the years following World War II, a retired Poirot’s next adventure is meant to be a spooky evening with an old friend and the best-selling author Ariadne Oliver, played by Tina Fey. Oliver invites Poirot to a séance at the haunted once-orphanage of renowned opera singer Rowena Drake (Kelly Bailey), who’s hired a clairvoyant (Michelle Yeoh) to host her guests in the hopes of speaking with her daughter, who passed a year before. To set the tone for a Halloween party gone amiss, Guđnadóttir tells us Branagh wanted the score “...to be very different from the other films, and he wanted it to be very dark and atonal and much more confined.”
During their interview, which you can watch in the video above or read below, Guđnadóttir discusses her personal music writing experience, how she prefers to score films, and how she chooses which projects, like Joker, Women Talking, and last year’s Oscar-nominee Tár, she wants to dedicate her time to. She tells us why A Haunting in Venice was more fun than a challenge, how long it typically takes to score a movie, and what it feels like to be the only Icelander with an Oscar.
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