Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood picks his favourite movie and TV series
When Radiohead were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by David Byrne in 2019, the former Talking Heads frontman revealed he was a “huge fan” of the British band, describing their latest album, A Moon Shaped Pool, as “very cinematic, like a movie in your head”. Indeed, the dramatic orchestral presence of the record is befitting of an epic movie or a kaleidoscopic dreamscape.
Radiohead’s later albums perhaps manifested their cinematic presence as a by-product of Jonny Greenwood’s increased involvement with film scores. While frontman Thom Yorke made his film score debut with 2018’s Suspiria, Greenwood made his first notch on the cinematic bedpost in 2003 with his soundtrack for the BAFTA-winning documentary Bodysong.
Following these early embers of solo acclaim, Greenwood’s big solo break came in 2007, when he scored There Will Be Blood. The movie, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and starring Daniel Day-Lewis, was a success of elephantine proportion and threw Greenwood under the spotlight as a serious player in the film score game.
“My reaction when Paul asked me was excitement,” Greenwood told NPR, recalling the moment Paul Thomas Anderson asked him to score 2007’s, There Will Be Blood. “I thought, ‘This is going to be a bit like being in a band with somebody — except I’m in a band with Paul and the people who are making this film.’”
This collaboration led to several more with Anderson, including 2018’s Phantom Thread, which saw Greenwood nominated for his first ‘Best Original Score’ Academy Award nomination. Greenwood was nominated for the award again in 2022 for his brilliant score composed for Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog. His other notable scores include those for the Lynne Ramsay films We Need to Talk About Kevin and You Were Never Really Here.
We know Greenwood has excellent taste in music, and with such an illustrious history in cinematic collaboration, one would assume he has a similarly discerning zeal for movies. In a 2019 interview feature for The Times, Greenwood was asked to name his favourite film.
“Something recent,” he began in response. “I loved Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War — easily the best film I saw last year, just enormous in its historical and romantic scope, but done with such clarity and narrative drive.”
Indeed, Cold War was a poignant success for Pawlikowski, who co-wrote the screenplay with Janusz Głowacki and Piotr Borkowski. Set between Poland and France during the Cold War, the story follows a musical director who falls in love with a young singer against the backdrop of political upheaval.
Elsewhere in the feature, Greenwood was also asked to name his favourite television series. “Curb Your Enthusiasm is a towering achievement,” Greenwood pondered. “Improvising a script for a sitcom is impressive in itself — that it’s so beautifully funny makes it a wonder. The actors just work with scene outlines and perhaps one or two lines of dialogue that need to be reached and then start filming. It’s joyous to watch.”
Watch the trailer for Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War below.
