15 of the Most Deeply Moving Soundtracks

Princess Mononoke

 

Sniff… Huh, sorry? Oh right, writing, yeah. That piece of music is my kryptonite, it reduces me to a blubbering man-child every single time I hear it. Joe Hisiashi has had a long, fruitful career making music for Studio Ghibli, producing many iconic scores, most of them for Hayou Miyazaki. This one, for my money, is the best. All the melodies make you feel exactly what you’re supposed to feel and it taps into that quintessentially Miyazaki trait of making you so happy that you burst into tears. Not an easy feat for any composer.

 

Lost

 

As far as drama and narrative go, Lost is a bit of a mixed bag. For all its inconsistencies, silly twists and SHANNON, the score remains one of the best in televisual history. Michael Giacchino has a knack for the moody and melancholic, just look at Up if you need any more evidence. From start to finish he was the real heart and soul of the show, framing all the most iconic narrative beats, from the departure of the raft to Charlie’s death to that stupid thing with the magic cork. That’s how good the score for Lost was, it made you get emotional about really silly, bizarre things that had no right to evoke such a response.

 

Schindler’s List

 

John Williams had to be on this list. It was difficult singling out one score, Jurassic Park is his most sweeping, Jaws his most effective, Star Wars his most iconic. Schindler’s List has to be his most moving though, how could it not be? If you watch the making-of documentaries, you begin to understand the turmoil that Spielberg and everyone else involved went through to make this film. Williams was likely no different, you can hear the pain in the wailing strings and the quietly swelling undertones, this music fits and understands its subject matter better than perhaps any score before or since. Kills me every damn time.

 

Shadow of the Colossus

Team Ico are kind of like the Kate Bushes of gaming, it takes absolutely ages for them to release anything, but when they do, it’s a doozy. So it was with Shadow of the Colossus, my favourite game in all of ever. All you do is ride across an expaansive, empty landscape, seeking out massive colossi to dispatch so that you can revive your dead girlfriend. Yet through this simple set up, something wordlessly haunting and tragic emerged. Even Adam Sandler likes it. It’s a flagship example of an emotion that only games can really evoke: guilt. Every time you topple one, the above piece fades into earshot and you watch as the magnificent, godlike creature you just murdered slowly collapses, leaking a mysterious black ooze into your body. Ko Otani did the score and it’s probably one of the greatest of all time, it’s massive, magical and monstrous.

The Last of the Mohicans

 

Alright, if we’re talking about moving period piece scores, there are other, more obvious ones. I could have put Gladiator here, or Titanic or even Pearl Harbor (awful film, amazing score) but this is the one that stands above the rest, so far as I’m concerned. Michael Mann has made some fantastic films and Last of the Mohicans might well be his best. Trevor Jones & Randy Edelman really created something that fits the time period and style of the film so perfectly, it’s reserved, abstract and heartbreaking, it hits you in all the right places, especially during the final scene, which is so powerful you practically have to watch it through a pinhole camera. Say it with me: I WILL FIND YOU. NO MATTER WHAT OCCURS.

 

And that’ll do it. Believe me I could go on and I kind of want to, but I fear I’d end up writing this article until the end of time. Any of your own additions to the list? Of course there are, leave them in the comments below, lets get an emotion roller-coaster of a playlist on the go.