After a recent screening of Inception, it occurred to YouTuber camiam321 that there may be some method to the madness of the dark, slow, bass-heavy theme that dominates Hans Zimmer‘s score.

He took Edith Piaf’s “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien” (which is used as a recurring motif in the film’s heist sequence), and slowed it down in Adobe Soundbooth by 300%. The result was a near exact match to the Zimmer theme.

Watch the video here below and listen to the comparison.

Thematically, this ties in perfectly with the film’s plot device in which (MINOR SPOILERS) a dream can feel exponentially longer than the time it takes to dream it, and a dream within a dream can feel exponentially longer than the dream level above it, in other words, hours within a dream can take place over the course of 20 minutes in real life.

Zimmer mentioned in a recent LA Times interview, “You realize that the elements that we’ve extracted from the Piaf song are the way you get from one dream level to the next.”

And now we see how literally those elements were transposed.

Video

Andrew Sorcini is a film editor and social networking enthusiast who produces and hosts the technology podcast The Drill Down.