Despite being a thoroughly humble and an assuming sort, Joe Wright has led quite the life

from drinking in the pub as a youngster with Cathy Burke to creating live visuals to the

Chemical Brothers.

He's long held ties to key players in British culture.

Not that he's become a director of great repute on anything other than merit, as evidenced

by his latest movie, Darkest Hour.

Telling the story of Winston Churchill's early days as Prime Minister during World War II,

Darkest Hour revolves around an extraordinary central performance from Gary Oldman, which

already landed him a golden globe. But the brilliance of this film is about so much more than

that, thanks in no small part to Joe's all-encompassing vision. I'm Edith Bowman and you're

listening to Soundtracking, the film music podcast brought to you in partnership with the EE BAFTAs.

Darkest Hour is up for a whopping nine awards at the ceremony, as well as Gary's inevitable nomination.

These include Best Film and, appropriately enough for our purposes, best music for Dario Marianelli.

On Joe's instruction, Dario's score was inspired by the modernist movement of the 50s and 60s, and specifically a more recent work called Hammers by contemporary German composer Nils Fram.

More of that in a moment, but we begin with a broader reflection upon the narrative accompanied by a piece called the war rooms

this is the second time i've had the absolute pleasure to talking to you about music. You might not remember the first time.

I do, of course I do. It was quite a few years ago now. It was when you were releasing Pan.

Yeah. And do you know what you did as part of that chat? You introduced me to Max Wichter, who I was kind of aware of. Right.

And really paid much attention. Right. I've got a lot of attention since then. Oh, that's good. I'm very glad to hear it.

Yeah, so thank you.

My absolute pleasure, yeah.

Congratulations on this new film, Darkest Hour.

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