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KNOWING THE SCORE - May 7, 2003

by Paul Tonks

soundtrack -- n. / Pron. "sound ( trak"
1. The narrow strip at one side of cinema film carrying the sound recording.
2. The music that accompanies a movie.
3. A commercial recording of such music.
4. A bastardised phrase record labels use to sell you crappy songs that have nothing to do with the movie they're apparently associated with.

In the last two weeks I’ve had cause to get very emotional about a lot of things in my life. As I write, I’m stricken (what a great word!) with tonsillitis, making anything that’s usually a drain on the senses even more so. If what follows comes across as unusually personal or sentimental, fear not –- I’ll no doubt be back to my regular detached and impartial self (!) next time… During SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE, there’s a scene where the guys and the gals compete for most OTT sentimental reaction to the movies. For the gals it’s AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER, for the guys it’s THE DIRTY DOZEN. That scene often gets joked about, usually by chaps who’d rather make out that movies never “get” to them. I’m sure there are folks out there with an icy inability to be emotionally involved by the flickering screen. But I’m not one of them. Here then in what’s only a very personal confession of taste and circumstance are…

TEN FILM MUSIC MOMENTS THAT HAVE MOVED ME TO TEARS

CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON
SCENE: Unable to connect with anything or anyone around her, Jen Yu puts herself in the hands of legend and swan dives off Wudan Mountain.
CUE: “Farewell” / PERPETRATOR: Tan Dun
WHY?
Some loved this epic romance. Some couldn’t allow themselves the imaginative leap to suspend the disbelief of wall-climbing and flying through the air. For me this is still a glorious composite of opera, ballet and motion picture, and when the tragedy climaxes via Yo Yo Ma’s most emotive playing of the main theme, I’m a mess.

EDWARD SCISSORHANDS
SCENE: Ed flashes back to the false hope of getting a pair of hands, only to inadvertently kill his Creator.
CUE: “Death!” / PERPETRATOR: Danny Elfman
WHY?
Vincent Price died some three years after making the movie, but it was his last feature film. I bought my VHS copy some time after. In the interim I’d become closer to the film, its music and certainly toward Price’s career. So yes, one night as I watched that scene, which dips into slow motion as The Inventor suffers a heart attack, Elfman’s tragic turn in the music flipped my stomach and I bawled like a baby.

THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING
SCENE: The merry band loses its guiding light.
CUE: “The Bridge of Khazad-Dum” / PERPETRATOR: Howard Shore
WHY?
It’s not like I didn’t know it was coming, but that first cinema viewing with a chum even more pumped up for all things Rings, there was something about seeing Ian McKellen disappear that made me leak salty water on my otherwise sugary popcorn. Repeat viewings still raise my hackles as the boy soprano follows the switch from darkness to brilliant chalky white. Shore propelled the action so furiously toward the face off with The Balrog. It still feels like a masterstroke on Jackson’s part to fade out everything but the music for that minute of grief.

THE GHOST AND MRS MUIR
SCENE: Lucy’s death triggers the return of Captain Gregg, and the two are reunited in the hereafter.
CUE: “Forever” / PERPETRATOR: Bernard Herrmann
WHY?
I’m a sucker for the romantic fairy tale, but something about this supernatural weepy between Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison has always stuck with me. GHOST or the trite copycat finale of TITANIC can’t match the simple power of this story’s finale. A lot of it is down to the beautiful score at work, in my opinion. Herrmann ties together themes we’ve heard all the way through, and pays off with a joyous crescendo.

A LITTLE PRINCESS
SCENE: Having been abandoned at the hideous Miss Minchin School for Girls, Sara thrills in hopes that the temporarily blind war veteran next door may be her long-lost father.
CUE: “Papa!” / PERPETRATOR: Patrick Doyle
WHY?
Oh, come on! Look how I just described the scene! Any composer could have tracked in an orchestra of spoons and still had most of the audience reduced to puddles. As it is, Doyle had already sowed the movie with a gorgeous song melody, laced with exotic Indian instrumentation. Here it’s ploughed for all its emotional worth.

THE MIGHTY
SCENE: Max goes thundering into what he thinks is a medical research facility, desperately searching for Freak.
CUE: “My Noble Knight” / PERPETRATOR: Trevor Jones
WHY?
As the boy treble soloist starts up, so does my blubbing. I’m only too well aware that this isn’t a widely seen movie, and for that (very disappointing) reason, I’m not going into detail here. I’d hate to spoil the end for anyone.

MY LIFE
SCENE: Any.
CUE: “Main Title” onwards… / PERPETRATOR: John Barry
WHY?
First movie I saw with my wife. It’s Michael Keaton dying. It’s about the fear of not being there for your own child. It has one of John Barry’s most beautiful melodies from his 90’s sad themes phase. Basically it’s not something I watch when in need of cheering up!

THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION
SCENE: The end of the movie.
CUE: “End Title” / PERPETRATOR: Thomas Newman
WHY?
After so much trust and sacrifice, my moral fibre has been twanged just about as much as it can stand. To top it all, Morgan Freeman’s soothing tones narrate the ending as a poem to the strengthening fortitude of faith in friendship. As the camera swallows an expanse of blue ocean and the friends embrace, he ends with “I hope…” Newman gently builds the moment on pregnant, echoing piano notes (in the cue “Zihuatanejo”) before unleashing that heavenly string writing he inherited from his Pop.

SOMEWHERE IN TIME
SCENE: Any.
CUE: Any / PERPETRATOR: John Barry
WHY?
I don’t know what it is about this movie, but Christopher Reeve portrays the angst of his out-of-time love scenario with utter believability. Any time the camera lingers on his blue eyes melting with love for Jane Seymour and Barry’s theme pipes up, it sets off a bottom lip wobble that just won’t go away. And the scene when he runs up the stairs to embrace her… Waaaaaaaaaaah!

THE STRAIGHT STORY
SCENE: Having driven across the States on a clapped-out mower, Alvin Straight sits with the brother he though he’d lost, and the 2 old men gaze up into the stars together for the last time.
CUE: “Rose’s Theme” / PERPETRATOR: Angelo Badalamenti
WHY?
So many parts of this movie move me deeply, but the ending continues to destroy me even after some eight or nine viewings. Badalamenti’s excursion into country and classical guitar has become one of my favourite examples for demonstrating the power of film music. It’s also become one of my strongest proofs that the craft is still alive with invention and artistry today. For these reasons, and now just like SCISSORHANDS above, knowing this was Richard Farnsworth’s last movie makes it a much more emotional finale.

NEWS NUGGETS:

One news item I haven’t been able to get out my head since being announced April 28th, is the new Academy Awards arrangements. The 2004 ceremony will be a whole month earlier on February 29th. This has the knock-on effect of shunting submissions deadlines ahead. Music category submissions will have to be made by December 1st. Quite what that means for movies released between December 1st and 31st is unclear, but it certainly can’t do them any favours.

So which third act of a fantasy epic due out December 17th looks like it’s gonna get some degree of shafting?

REVIEW:

X2 - John Ottman, Superb Records, TRM-74073-2 ****
For days I’ve been reading pockets of reaction that I could swear someone is just keeping in store to cut and paste out into the community every so often: “There’s no Theme” / “What a missed opportunity not to have a great superhero theme”, etc. I’m beyond being annoyed or merely tired of reading this same line of commentary now. It would take several weeks of column space here for me to get into how the state of movies today dictates what a composer is asked for. Actually, I’ve got into the mire of complications several times before. So dip into my Archives (below) and see what’s already been said. But for the life of me, I’m stumped by most of what I’ve been hearing about X2’s score. I interviewed Ottman here at MPS just as we started up, and just as he was getting into editing chores on the movie. Yet even without the background info I’d gleaned there, or several interim updates, I would still have found myself thrilling to a first play-through of this album.

A very identifiable and memorable team Theme appears in the first few seconds. I’ll happily admit that one reason it’ll stay locked in my memory, is that its most prominent section puts me in mind of a mutated and super-fast rendition of the main theme James Horner introduced with WRATH OF KHAN. No no no -– no accusation of plagiarism. This score is full of stylistic homage, but this is a happy coincidence I’m making for myself. And just to finish off the “no themes” nonsense, I’m still taking it in from what is a judiciously edited together work, but there are easily a half dozen secondary character motifs. What seems to fail to occur to those endlessly complaining about the absence of their John Williams style hero motifs, is that unless the movie’s SUPERMAN or INDIANA JONES, there’s no call for a balls-out resoundingly cheery theme. The X-Men are a decidedly melancholy bunch. There are too many grey areas, let alone Jean Grey areas, for the music to do so simple a trick as invite cheery applause for their heroic deeds. Just like the efforts in the first movie to distance itself from 2-D cartoonery (“would you prefer yellow spandex?”), the music is serving the purpose of maintaining a reality around the characters.

I actually feel Ottman’s done a more cohesive job than was done in the original. He certainly had the benefit of time and collaborative understanding in his favour. More than that however, it’s in the subtlety of something like the gentle cello opening “Cerebro”, or the quiet use of choir in “I’m In” that highlights his overall approach to me.

I’ll always favour the subtler approach to achieving an emotional effect. Hence the whole article above!

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