Despite these obstacles, the movie pulses with skittish tension, dry wit and bipolar energy, all of which is intensified by the music of Mr. Reznor, who's best known as the founder of Nine Inch Nails, and Mr. Ross, who's worked behind the scenes on several NIN albums. At times, the score seems to provide commentary and, ultimately, a moral judgment about the characters' activities and missing values. (It's available as a digital download for $5 at Mr. Reznor's www.nullco.com.)
Mr. Reznor originally declined director David Fincher's invitation to score "The Social Network." He'd just gotten married and was coming off a long, grueling NIN tour. "My life has two modes. One is sitting around writing and contemplating or building things. The other is execution mode. It takes a while to switch from one to the other," the 45-year-old Mr. Reznor said by phone last week. "I read the script, but what was nagging me was the idea of committing the next year of my life to it. I told David, 'I don't think I can give you my best work.'"
But as he began to cool down from the tour, Mr. Reznor had second thoughts. "I realized I'd screwed up. I'd let him down," he said. When he called the director to apologize, Mr. Fincher told him he was still eager to have him. Mr. Reznor contacted Mr. Ross, who had recently scored the Hughes Brothers' "The Book of Eli," starring Denzel Washington. The duo already had several projects they planned to work on, including How to Destroy Angels—featuring Mr. Reznor's wife, Mariqueen Maandig—and some new NIN music. But a film score presented Mr. Reznor with the kind of challenge he relishes.
"Here was my strategy," he explained. "I really try to put myself in uncomfortable situations. Complacency is my enemy.
"My music, I hope, takes 100% of your concentration," he added. "I know how to do that. But here this music we were creating wasn't intended to be in the forefront." Mr. Reznor found precedent for the right approach in how he and Mr. Ross had created the long-form instrumental piece "Ghosts I-IV," a NIN album he called "soundtracks for daydreams" that has no narrative pull-through.
For "The Social Network," Mr. Reznor said, "We wanted something a bit more Tangerine Dream than Debussy," mentioning the influential German electronic group. "I started thinking about something synthetic for Zuckerberg, his choices, his path."
The music that emerged created an ambience, he said, one that was "sometimes chilly, sometimes warm, but always spoiling around the edges." The duo decided to place an acoustic piano amid a sea of synthetic sounds. In the film's first Reznor-Ross piece, individual notes on piano ring against what might be a rattling wire. Foreboding bass notes enter, as does a sound that could be the wind or a cry. But the tender piano prevails, and we've entered a complicated environment fraught with danger and human folly. Or, as Mr. Reznor describes it, "The piece communicates tension, vulnerability, sadness and something unpleasant."
Even before the Reznor-Ross score begins, Mr. Fincher subtly signals the role of the film's music as judge and commentator, rather than supporting and intensifying on-screen action with minimal opinion. When we first meet Mark, he's in a bar with a poised and witty date he insults repeatedly, both willfully and through his lack of social grace. His date soon ditches him, but not before defining Mark with a biting, one-word insult. As Mark retreats to his blog to seek revenge, in the background pounds the White Stripes' "Ball & Biscuit," with its lyric, "And right now you could care less about me, but soon enough you will care by the time I'm done."
At the film's end, we hear the Beatles' "Baby, You're a Rich Man," with the lines, "How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?" and "You keep all your money in a big brown bag behind a zoo." As he sings, John Lennon seems to mock Mark and his blithe, unsavory partner Sean Parker. The soundtrack also contains Bob Marley's "Crazy Baldheads," with its lyric, "Here comes the con man, coming with this con plan," and the Dead Kennedys "California Uber Alles," with the line "Zen fascists will control you."
Though Mr. Reznor didn't discuss the other tunes on the film's soundtrack with Mr. Fincher, he said he wasn't surprised the director found that level of detail in them. "Nothing David does is accidental."
For the composer, "The Social Network" assignment wasn't without its complications: Mr. Reznor said it took him and Mr. Ross "three seven-day weeks of 12-hour days" to get the right tone for their just-short-of-silly adaptation of Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King," which accompanies a frantic sequence at a Henley Royal Regatta on the Thames. "That was David's idea," Mr. Reznor said. "Never in my normal life would I think of covering that track."
Still, for all the score's icy abrasiveness and reflected aggression, the repeated piano motif suggests a trace of sympathy for Mark.
"I don't know the real Mark Zuckerberg," Mr. Reznor said, "but I understand that character. The act of creation at any cost, I can relate to. The pursuit of my vision of Nine Inch Nails caused betrayals and cost me friendships. But the goal was No. 1. Now as an adult I think I would've done those things differently."
-Wall Street Journal
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