Time (Inception)

Inception, released in 2010, set Zimmer a structural problem rather than a dramatic one: Christopher Nolan's film runs several layers of dream time at different speeds, and the music had to make the relation between them audible. Zimmer built the score from material derived from the Édith Piaf song used within the film, stretched and slowed so that the same phrase appears at different rates. Time, the closing cue, states its four-chord progression plainly for the first time after two hours of fragments. The recording combines orchestra, electric guitar and heavily processed brass.