Composer Dominik Scherer Discusses The Music Beneath The Mystery In 'The Tourist'
HBO Max’s The Tourist is one of the most mesmerizing whodunnits in recent memory. What makes it so great isn’t the ever-evolving mystery at its center or the exhilarating journey Jamie Dornan’s unnamed protagonist takes the audience to uncover the truth. It’s Dominik Scherer’s genre-bending score.
Now, for those unfamiliar with the series, it follows one seemingly normal Irish man (Dornan) who wakes up with amnesia in an Australian hospital. With only a small few clues to work with, he begins to retrace his steps in the hopes of regaining his memory. When another mysterious man arrives, determined to kill him, he begins to suspect that he never led a normal life to begin with and that he was sent to Australia to carry out something more sinister.
As expected, there are a lot of humorous scenarios that can result from someone losing their memory. The series is full of them. In fact, without getting into too much detail, the first episode both opens and closes with the same bit between two characters about how ridiculous it can be when people forget things. What makes it funnier the second time around is that Dornan’s character literally has no recollection that the conversation already happened. Moments like that add levity to the often strange and nerve-wracking story.
In an exclusive interview with FilmSpeak, Scherer detailed the difficulty he had balancing the series’ heavy moments with its light-hearted ones. It’s always hard,” he said. “Because you don't want to it too much in the dark stuff…I'm not a comedy specialist, you know, but, but I think I have done some, and it's never easy to time it right..”
He added that some of the comedic performances from the actors made it easier for him to do his job, and that he, “wasn’t scoring the comedy that much. It was more kind of trying to stick the whole storyline together [with tension].”
The comedy and the drama aside, he found ways to mesh different genres of music in the show too. Despite its clear Western roots, he said that his favorite contribution was an alternative version of the series main theme titled “Man Without The Past.”
“I recorded a kind of flamenco bass guitar version of it,” Scherer explained. “It's really simple [and I] played it live in one go.”
Having been involved in the project since it was nothing more than a script, in the interview, Scherer also confessed that he has yet to see the final version of the show surprisingly. He says he’s seen previous versions, but wants a little bit more time to pass before he goes back and reviews his work. “Now, it's still a bit too close, “ he explained. “I will probably watch the whole thing again this summer or something, and I’ll kind of sort of sit back and [wonder] ‘Should we have done that there? Or should we have?’ You know? Like a viewer.”
The full soundtrack is available now for purchase, but can be streamed on Apple Music and Spotify as well. The entire first season of The Tourist is also available to stream exclusively on HBO Max now.