Rhizomes Instead of Heroes: The Smashing Machine

Photograph by Nala Sinephro

I won’t lie — I wasn’t sure I’d pull this one off, because this week’s case is a strange one, at least for me.

This week we’re talking about the soundtrack of The Smashing Machine.Why? Because it was last week’s film, and because I found it fascinating to analyze how the music pairs with a film like this.Beyond being a biopic, I’d call it something else — a film that… honestly, I didn’t like.But behind those subjective clashes, the music still speaks.

I’ll be honest: that week I went to the cinema really excited — there’d been a lot of hype after its screening at the Venice Festival.And also because a few weeks after the festival, I listened to the soundtrack and fell in love with it.

The music was composed by Nala Sinephro, a Belgian jazz artist, and this is her debut in the world of film music.I really appreciate the inclusion of new voices like hers, because it’s from these places that we can start painting new landscapes of how cinematic genres look — and more importantly, how they sound.

Sinephro is well known for her use of synthesizers and harp — though she’s said she doesn’t like being labeled as “the harp girl,” haha. Through her music, she aims to free jazz from the rigid structures imposed on it and return it to its origins of rebellion and resistance.

In this case, we have a strong, unapologetic jazz score that shapes the how of a biographical and sports drama.

Sinephro uses harps, synthesizers, and harmoniums to give voice to the emotional highs and lows — the inner fluxes and adrenaline rushes an athlete faces throughout their journey.And, of course, percussion plays a leading role — I’d even call it a ticking time bomb.Because that’s what it feels like when adrenaline peaks: percussion = emotional rush, pure intensity.

To understand the dialogue between the music and the image, it’s worth looking briefly at jazz’s symbolic history and the dominant emotions in this story.

Jazz as Counter-Narrative

Jazz has always been a genre born from the margins — defined by freedom, improvisation, and, at times, irrationality.I remember talking about this before: jazz offers tailor-made worlds —unstructured, non-hierarchical, rhizomatic worlds.And, in that same sense, decolonized ones.

That’s why I think choosing jazz as the foundation behind the image does two things: it rounds and amplifies.

It rounds because it invites us to think about the emotional processes we see on screen — unstable, inexplicable, accelerated. Emotions like anger, frustration, fear of failure, and society’s expectations of “victory” become so overwhelming that they could transform into creative revolution — into pulses capable of cracking the established order, producing fissures born from uncontained emotion.

It amplifies because jazz redirects the narrative focus away from the “exceptional life” of an emblematic figure (if that were the case, we’d probably hear orchestral brass and anxious strings) and instead turns the spotlight toward the emotional landscape of that figure.

When Emotion Becomes Revolution

When we confront those irrational emotions we’re taught to repress, master, or live “above,” underneath remains that core of chaos and beauty — the same one jazz expresses. Behind a biopic, we’re usually told stories of exemplary individuals who overcame adversity —but this one isn’t quite that.It’s not the life of a “model” public figure like John Lennon or Lionel Messi —it’s about someone battling demons we all face.

And while society teaches us to institutionalize, flatten, or domesticate those inner battles, jazz liberates them.

This film didn’t leave me with profound reflections about the protagonist’s life —but it did leave me deeply aware of jazz’s power to build a bridge between our irrational emotions and their transformation into something else — into smashing machines themselves.

Original Version