That old idea that good scores are supposed to be invisible, that you’re not supposed to notice them, is a fallacy, says “Far from Heaven” director Todd Haynes.
“At least in certain kinds of movies, you’re meant to be aware of the music. It’s speaking things that no one else in the film can,” Haynes adds. And his sentiment is reflected in 10 of this year’s most talked-about scores.
Alphabetically, by composer:
ELMER BERNSTEIN (“Far from Heaven”)
Already honored for this music by the L.A. Films Critics Assn., the 80-year-old composer (with one Oscar win and 12 other nominations behind him) recalls: “I looked at the film and I thought, What an opportunity to write the kind of score that you don’t get a chance to do anymore, one that deals with feelings.”
Although Bernstein’s work for Haynes’s ’50s homage has been described by several critics as lush, two-thirds of it is actually performed by a chamber ensemble of just 12 players, with the piano as the central instrument in the score (a la the composer’s classic “To Kill a Mockingbird”, Haynes’s temp track for many scenes).
TERENCE BLANCHARD (“25th Hour”)
In his 14th collaboration with director Spike Lee, the Grammy-nominated composer and jazz trumpeter created a score that doubles as music for a post-9/11 city. The theme, as heard over the film’s Manhattan skyline titles, features wordless vocals by Sri Lanka-born Tamil vocalist Manickam Yogeswaran, which lend both an elegaic quality and a world-music vibe to the score. Blanchard also blended Irish instruments and colors to reflect the background of the many policemen and firefighters who died at ground zero.
“When Spike talked to me about post-9/11 New York as a backdrop for the picture, I started thinking in terms of Arabic vocals and percussion, Irish pipes and whistles. I think they lend a haunting texture to the score,” says Blanchard.
PHILIP GLASS (“The Hours”)
The New York-based concert hall and theater composer doesn’t do many films, but says that he couldn’t pass up Stephen Daldry’s film of Michael Cunningham’s novel about three women in crisis in different decades. “I saw right away that for the film to work, there had to be some completely cohesive element that would pull the three stories together.”
The composer, a previous Oscar nominee for ‘Kundun” and Golden Globe winner for “The Truman Show”, says his music for “The Hours” was written for large string ensemble and piano. He explains: “Each time the music appeared, it would be a bridge between all three scenes. Music could completely resolve and focus the emotional point of view.”
Glass’s music for “The Hours” “heightens the film’s emotional quotient and gives the story added grandeur, melancholy, and uneasiness,” said the L.A. Times.
ELLIOT GOLDENTHAL (“Frida”)
Goldenthal describes his music for Julie Taymor’s Frida Kahlo biopic as “very isolated, very intimate music, almost like another character in the movie.” It’s mostly guitar-based, small-ensemble pieces. Goldenthal penned both the underscore and several Mexican-flavored songs as well as choosing the many authentic tunes from Kahlo’s life and times.
The New York-based composer used Argentine guitarist Francisco ‘Pancho’ Navarro as soloist on many cues.
The Wall Street Journal said, “Goldenthal’s incidental music enriches countless scenes, often mere seconds at a time: the flourish of a flamenco-style guitar; the whistle of an accordion, a delicate phrase on piano.”
JERRY GOLDSMITH (“The Sum of All Fears”)
The veteran composer, who has one Oscar and 17 other nominations stretching back to 1962, added an unexpected musical twist to the Tom Clancy thriller. The film opens with a nuclear bomb being loaded onto an Israeli fighter jet, followed by scenes of the jet exploding and the bomb being lost in the desert.
Goldsmith and director Phil Alden Robinson – in the aftermath of 9/11 – decided to counterpoint the images with “a prayer for peace” says the composer. Paul Williams wrote the words, which were translated into Latin and sung by a mezzo-soprano and 40-voice choir. “Emotionally, it somehow struck a chord,” says Goldsmith. “Sometimes the cerebral approach does work.”
Noted Variety: “Goldsmith’s score will especially bring joy to fans of his great ’60s-era work.”
JAMES NEWTON HOWARD (“Signs”)
Howard’s three-note motif, developed through countless variations and growing in intensity, propelled M. Night Shyamalan’s sci-fi suspense piece about faith and redemption. This was Howard’s third film for Shyamalan, after “The Sixth Sense” and “Unbreakable”.
Five-time Oscar nominee’s aim was, he says, “to try and establish a subtle yet extremely ominous sense of foreboding throughout the picture, in a hopefully non-clichéd way. We wanted the music to express the idea as simply and economically, and in as singular a fashion, as possible.”
The New York Times referred to the audience’s “heightened attention, a state intensified by the velvet stabs of Howard’s opening music.”
THOMAS NEWMAN (“The Road to Perdition”)
Newman’s first assignment for director Sam Mendes was the Oscar-winning “American Beauty”, which also netted Newman his fourth Acad nom for original score. His music for “Road to Perdition” was even more ambitious. His sonic palette ranged from a small ensemble of unusual acoustic instruments (ranging from Irish bouzouki to 19th-century Stroviol) to large orchestras with as many as 60 string players.
Newman explains this score was more “thematically based, unlike ‘American Beauty’, which was based more on percussion and pulsation.” He cited the look of the film – “the dark colors of the opening, lighter colors in the middle, and the beautiful colors toward the end of the movie” – as influencing his own musical ideas.
The New York Times said: “Newman’s symphonic score infuses a sweeping Copland-esque evocation of the American flatlands with Irish folk motifs.”
HOWARD SHORE (“The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers”)
Last year’s Oscar winner for the first installment in the “Rings” trilogy, Shore spent nearly a year composing, orchestrating, and conducting more than three hours of music for the second. While several themes resurface, much of it is new material: particularly for the Viking-esque Rohan culture (in which all the Tolken-written and –inspired texts are sung in Old English), the princess Eowyn and the ancient Ents (heard on wood percussion). The strange, schizophrenic character of Gollum, voiced by hammer dulcimer, even gets a song over the end titles.
“It’s the second act of a 10-hour piece. I think of it as operatic,” Shore says, noting that the 96-piece London Philharmonic was augmented by a 60-voice mixed choir, 30-voice boys chord, and several vocal soloists.
JOHN WILLIAMS (“Minority Report”, “Catch Me If You Can”)
For the first time since 1976, Williams has four eligible scores (including installments in the “Star Wars” and “Harry Potter” series).
Williams says he found the futuristic chase film “Minority Report” “a huge challenge musically,” with 100 minutes of music encompassing considerable action material “fast-paced and incisive in a rhythmic way.”
For Tom Cruise’s family backstory, the music is “more melodic, more emotionally based”; and for the film-noir context, “a kind of Bernard Herrmann gloom that weaves and threads its way through many scenes” of the film’s complex murder mystery.
The New Republic offered “a bow to John Williams, whose music… supports or italicizes the action.”
In a lighter vein, “Catch Me If You Can” finds the five-time Oscar winner (who has 36 more nominations) in the jazz territory of his youth, with elaborately written solos for alto sax player Dan Higgins – for the poignant music for the central character’s sad-sack father (Christopher Walken), and in a seriocomic vein for the sleuthing music of FBI agent Tom Hanks.
The escapades of con man Frank Abagnale Jr. (Leonardo DiCaprio) are accompanied by what Williams called “a kind of loopy piece that I hope has a little touch of magic to it, as though this kind was a magician performing tricks for us.”
OTHER SCORES OF NOTE
Falling into the category of memory work for forgotten, small, or obscure films: John Barry’s “Enigma”, which deftly combines the composer’s recent romantic style with his classic ’60s spy music a la “Ipcress File”; Rachel Portman’s “Nicholas Nickelby”, whose strings-and-woodwinds score buoys the often-tragic tale; and Gabriel Yared’s “Possession”, a lush orchestral accompaniment for parallel 19th- and 21st-century love stories.