Smilla's Sense of Snow evokes the drab, wintry milieu of its source film with almost too much accuracy --
Hans Zimmer's icy electronic atmospheres are too remote and subtle for their own good, yielding a score that never quite captures the listener's attention. Written in collaboration with
Zimmer's Media Ventures partner
Harry Gregson-Williams, the score veers off in the direction of ambient music, both for good and for ill -- on the one hand, it achieves a palpable sense of mystery and dread, but on the other hand it's little more than sonic wallpaper, creating an environment that simply fills space without commanding notice. One must appreciate the absence of the bombast so common to
Zimmer's work, but
Smilla's Sense of Snow is nevertheless all style and no substance.