Smilla's Sense of Snow

AMG Review of Smilla's Sense of Snow

Jason Ankeny
All Music Guide

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.