Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine Has Nala Sinephro’s First Score And A Cleaners From Venus Song Played In Full
After teaming with his brother Josh on modern classics like Good Time and Uncut Gems, filmmaker Benny Safdie is making his solo directorial debut this Oscar-bait season with The Smashing Machine, which doubles as Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s big prestige gambit. The film stars Johnson, opposite Emily Blunt, as amateur wrestler and MMA fighter Mark Kerr, and though the character doesn’t sound so different from his own background as a pro wrestler, he underwent a physical transformation for the role (for instance, he has hair).
Safdie is a big music fan, and that fandom comes across in several ways in the movie. For one thing, it features the first film score by Nala Sinephro, the London-based experimental jazz great, who, per Wikipedia, also appears in the film singing the national anthem. “It was an amazing and incredible journey creating the score with Benny, grateful for all the wonderful people who’ve been part of this special project,” Sinephro wrote on Instagram back in May.
The movie also features the entirety of the Cleaners From Venus song “Corridor Of Dreams,” from the British indie-pop band’s 1982 album Midnight Cleaners. Band mastermind Martin Newell revealed as much in an Instagram slideshow that showed him mingling with Johnson, Blunt, and Safdie at BAFTA in Piccadilly. The song is five minutes long, so including its full runtime is no small commitment on Safdie’s part.
Below, check out the aforementioned social posts and enjoy yourself some “Corridor Of Dreams.”
