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

The Grand Budapest Hotel

The 2014 Wes Anderson comedy score featuring balalaika-heavy Eastern European folk whimsy.

1000pts

2

Zero Dark Thirty

The 2012 Kathryn Bigelow thriller with a tense, minimalist score underlining the hunt for Bin Laden.

412pts

3

Imitation Game

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

412pts

4

Argo

The 2012 Ben Affleck thriller with a score perfectly evoking 1970s political paranoia.

412pts

5

The King Speech

The 2010 historical drama score whose Beethoven-adjacent themes anchored the king's emotional journey.

247pts

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

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

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

1pts