MovieScore Media’s next release from the world of European cinema is the gorgeously unnerving music from Agnieszka Holland’s Charlatan, the official submission of Czech Republic for the ‘Best International Feature Film’ category of the 93rd Academy Awards in 2021. The album release co-incides with the film’s release in Germany and Netherlands and precedes its release in USA (distribution by Strand Releasing) and the UK. Directed by Oscar-nominated Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland, the films tells the life story of well-known Czech healer Jan Mikolášek (Ivan Trojan) who diagnosed and healed people using his intuition and his familiarity with herbs. As he healed not only poor but also many well-known people, including Czechoslovak President, Antonín Zápotocký, his methods got a thoroghout investigation by the Communist regime. The film recently won five Czech Lions and its director was nominated for the European Film Award.

“The score to Charlatan keeps more secret than it reveals,” explains composer Antoni Komasa-Lazarkiewicz about how his and Mary Komasa’s music matched the mysterious themes of the film. “The challenge was to keep it painfully restrained and yet full of paradoxical, contradictory emotions, hidden undercurrents, questions and exclamations. The stiffness and rawness of the motives is counterbalanced by the inner life of each note, with every strike of the bow, every phrase becoming a piece of its own. We wanted the listener to be able to look at this music through a magnifying glass and suddenly realize, how much vitality, energy and fragility there can be inside of it.”

Polish composer Antoni Komasa-Lazarkiewicz studied composition at the Academy of Music in Krakow, writing his first score for an Agnieszka Holland film in 2002’s Julie Walking Home. Since then, he collaborated on most of the filmmaker’s projects, including Copying Beethoven, Spoor (which won the Silver Bear Alfred Bauer Prize) and Mr Jones, which received a Golden Bear nomination at Berlinale 2019. Antoni’s own awards include the 2008 European Film Music Trophy Young Talent Award for Winterreise, the German Television Music Award for My Mother, My Bride and I. and an individual achievement award for his Filip Bajon’s The Butler and Adrian Panek’s Werewolf as part of the 43rd Polish Film Festival.

Mary Komasa is Antoni’s wife and collaborated with him on the score for Charlatan. She is a Polish singer and composer who has also worked as a model, brought up in an artistic family with her father being an actor (Wiesław Komasa) and her brother a director (Jan Komasa). Mary studied piano, organ, harpsichord and opera singing, and enjoys a succesful career as an artist in the dream pop genre. Her self-titled debut solo album came out in 2015.

MMS21012 CHARLATAN (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Music Composed by Antoni Komasa-Łazarkiewicz & Mary Komasa
Release date (digital): April 23, 2021