Reservation Road is a gripping new drama from Academy Award nominee Terry George, the director of 2004’s critically lauded Hotel Rwanda. Two-time Oscar nominee Joaquin Phoenix (Walk the Line, Gladiator) and Oscar winner Jennifer Connolly (Blood Diamond, A Beautiful Mind) head up this powerful cast as a couple whose lives become tragically intertwined with those of another family as a result of a child’s death. Mark Ruffalo (Zodiac, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and Oscar winner Mira Sorvino (Mimic, Mighty Aphrodite) star as the other parents who find their lives dramatically affected by the unfortunate turn of events.

Mark says he greatly enjoyed the experience of his first collaboration with Terry George “Terry is an expert storyteller, and his handling of these characters who find themselves in the midst of a heart-wrenching situation is quite remarkable and really draws you in.” In the music he wrote for the movie, Mark utilized a string quartet and experimented with electronics to underscore the ideas of loss and forgiveness being explored by the film’s central characters.

Liner notes from Terry George:

“Reservation Road deals with loss and grief, revenge and redemption. It’s a story of four ordinary people put through the most harrowing trauma any of us might ever face – the loss of a child. I knew from the beginning that I needed a score that was poignant yet not maudlin and powerful without overwhelming the superb work of my four extraordinary actors..

“That’s when I delved into my CD library of scores and found myself almost weeping again at one of the most beautiful pieces of music I’ve ever heard. It was the score for A River Runs Through It. I’m an ardent fisherman and the film is, to me, the greatest movie made about the subject. There’s a scene in River where Brad Pitt hook an enormous trout and rolls down the rapids. The music carries him along in sparkling Montana waters. I have a lump in my throat again.

“And then there I was working with Mark Isham, the man who wrote those beautiful notes, on the score for Reservation Road. Almost his first words were that he didn’t want the obvious. He wanted to experiment with sounds and tones. He wanted to underlay musical themes that subtly – a word that Mark Isham owns – heightened the fears and rages of four tormented souls.

“In two glorious summer days in Santa Barbara he laid down a score that not just supports this drama but becomes a character all of its own; whispering emotions, running along empty roads, falling with autumn leaves on gentle Connecticut shores. Please, fall in love with the beautiful score for Reservation Road, as I did then and do again and again every time I listen.”

Terry George