Trent Reznor / Atticus Ross: "In the Hall of the Mountain King"

There are enough questions about The Social Network to know that it’s bound to be a contentious award winner: is the movie sexist or about sexism? If the latter, did we need yet another examination of the male ego and its insecurities? Is the movie being cheeky or hypocritical when it violates Mark Zuckerberg’s privacy for the purpose of a slanted zeitgeistal exposition? The questions are big enough that we mostly ignore what might be one of the most restrained assemblages of music in Trent Reznor’s mostly silly career.

Sure, most of Reznor and Atticus Ross’ soundtrack consists of either strains of noise simmering underneath piano strikes of ill portent, or cool, inhuman techno thuds, as obvious as Sorkin’s THIS IS WHAT IT ALL MEANS script. But there is one moment of ebullient, hysterical brilliance, which is married, tellingly, to the movie’s one stylistic departure (and thus, perhaps, its best scene).

For those of you who have seen the movie, I’m talking about the rowing scene. An intensely mechanical, chopped-up rendition of the 19th Century orchestral composition “In the Hall of the Mountain King” is played giddily alongside the frayed peripheries and ultra-particulate focus of Fincher’s testosterone-fueled tête-à-tête. It’s a jarring contrast, unapologetically stylized in a movie ostensibly about college kids sitting around in rooms talking at one another. But it’s also a scene of thematic brevity, a self-encapsulated description of the elite in competition, the caprice of one boat’s worth of rich white men losing by less than a boat-length to another boat’s worth of rich white men, and to the victor goes the world. No surprise, maybe, that “Mountain King” was chosen—not only for its frantic acceleration and dramatic conclusion, but because of its thematic confluence. The original piece is meant to describe a protagonist who sneaks into the Mountain King’s lair and spies on the King and his trolls. We, the audience, are temporarily given similar purview of the playpen of the world’s elite, and are meant to also bask in its horror and barbarity: power turned playful, unaware of the trickle-down ramifications. Like Facebook, the movie fetishizes exclusivity while giving us—everyone, really— the best seat in the house for just what happens in those exclusive places.

It was unsurprisingly Fincher’s choice to include “Mountain King” on the soundtrack; Reznor has never really been one to demonstrate a thematic playfulness, preferring instead to cram the line “down on your knees” into a few more songs. But the song is a virtuoso retcon, both a curiosity and a standout. If electronic music is useful insofar as it enables creative appropriation and rearranging of subjects, Reznor and Ross, with the burden of storytelling removed from them, seem to have really gotten it right here.