The Dark Knight  is currently smashing box office records with the same alacrity that the Joker makes a pencil disappear, and as with the first Christopher Nolan Batman movie, its soundtrack is provided by two veteran industry hands in the person of James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer.  While it seems like this time around, their work was heavily influenced by the seething, screeching, atonal score that Jonny Greenwood wrote for There Will Be Blood, it's still highly reminiscent of the work they did for Batman Begins.

The two had their work cut out for them when they accepted the assignment from Warner Brothers to score the rebooting of the Batman franchise.  DC Comics' famed vigilante already had a number of memorable pieces of music associated with him:  from the jaunty, swinging theme song to the campy '60s TV show composed by jazz veteran Neal Hefti to the brooding, chaotic main theme written by Danny Elfman for the first Tim Burton Batman (which later became the theme music for the celebrated Batman animated series), and even Johann Strauss's operetta Die Fledermaus have been associated with the hero in the past.  Their goal when putting together a new score for Nolan's reboot of the franchise was to create something that conjured the proper tone of darkness and struggle without too obviously drawing on what had come before.  Howard, whose previous work has included The Prince of Tides and The Sixth Sense, took charge of the main theme and the loftier passages, while Zimmer, the German-born composer who created the eerie score for The Ring as well as the memorable soundtrack to Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line, worked on the incidental music and quieter, more sinister passages.  It was imperative that they create something that enhanced the brooding, bleak tone of Batman Begins while never threatening to overwhelm the action on screen or make the psychological development of the characters too obvious.

Happily -- if you can use that word to apply to something so grim-sounding -- they were successful.  The soundtrack, while it lacks any songs as immediately catchy as Hefti's famous Batman theme or as universally recognizable as Elfman's, perfectly captures the tone and feel of the Christopher Nolan vision of Batman.  The tracks (all of which are cleverly named for various species of bats) exactly invoke the right move, from the slow, magisterial main theme to the ponderous, somber music that accompanies the destruction of Wayne Manor to the mesmerizing, atonal shrieks that go along with the first attacks by the hideous Scarecrow.  It's not quite strong enough to stand entirely on its own, except perhaps as mood music for a Halloween party, but it's still a terrific piece of scoring that illustrates the right way to make music and image mesh. 

BEST TRACKS: "Verspertilio", the song that opens the film and the movie, shows how the main theme to a Batman film doesn't necessarily need to be bombastic or hummable to work well.  "Molossus", which is the music by which the villainous Scarecrow terrifies his subjects, is both fitting and instantly recognizable thanks to its out-of-control slithering strings.  And the climactic battle scene is accompanied by "Corynorhinus", which adeptly combines Howard's trademarked heavy, echo-laden piano chords and Zimmer's crushing percussion and taste for non-western tonal dynamics.  

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