The 7 Best Alexandre Desplat Film Scores

Delicate, playful, and quietly devastating by turns, these scores prove restraint can be as powerful as bombast. Which is the best?

1. 1
   The Grand Budapest Hotel

   The 2014 Wes Anderson comedy score featuring balalaika-heavy Eastern European folk whimsy.
   1000pts
2. 2
   Zero Dark Thirty

   The 2012 Kathryn Bigelow thriller with a tense, minimalist score underlining the hunt for Bin Laden.
   412pts
3. 3
   Imitation Game

   The 2014 score for the Alan Turing biopic, full of mechanical and mathematical rhythmic patterns.
   412pts
4. 4
   Argo

   The 2012 Ben Affleck thriller with a score perfectly evoking 1970s political paranoia.
   412pts
5. 5
   The King Speech

   The 2010 historical drama score whose Beethoven-adjacent themes anchored the king's emotional journey.
   247pts
6. 6
   The Shape of Water

   The 2017 Guillermo del Toro fantasy score that won the Academy Award for its lyrical, water-themed romanticism.
   1pts
7. 7
   Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

   The 2010-2011 final Harry Potter installment scores that carried the emotional weight of a franchise farewell.
   1pts