The Wall Street Journal-20080126-WEEKEND JOURNAL- Leisure - Arts- One of These Movie Soundtracks Is Oscar Bound- A look at the five compositions that are nominated for Best Original Score
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WEEKEND JOURNAL; Leisure & Arts: One of These Movie Soundtracks Is Oscar Bound; A look at the five compositions that are nominated for Best Original Score
The members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences who picked the five Oscar nominees for Best Original Score this year overlooked such excellent works as Mychael Danna's dark, gnawing music for "Breach" and Howard Shore's bitterly melancholic score for "Eastern Promises." (Jonny Greenwood's monumental music for "There Will Be Blood" wasn't eligible, since it recycled parts of one of his earlier compositions.) This was reminiscent of last year, when the academy members unaccountably failed to nominate Alexandre Desplat's gorgeous score for "The Painted Veil." Still, in nominating composers Marco Beltrami for "3:10 to Yuma," Michael Giacchino for "Ratatouille," James Howard Newton for "Michael Clayton," Alberto Iglesias for "The Kite Runner" and Dario Marianelli for "Atonement," they did select fine works that not only fulfill the traditional and necessary role of music in a film but stand on their own.
As befits a Western thriller, the score for "3:10 to Yuma" is taut and melodramatic, suspenseful and dusty. Mr. Beltrami may be considered a genre composer -- his previous scores were primarily for horror films -- and here he cites the conventions of the spaghetti western: stabbing strings, tympani, harpsichord-like crystal notes in the upper register and strummed guitars. There's an unsettling growl at the music's core that provides the tension that precedes a threat, and the dissonant, percussive piece "Flight of the Princess" builds until its bursts. Affecting though it is, Mr. Beltrami's work perhaps too readily brings to mind Ennio Morricone's compositions for Sergio Leone's films, though that may well have been his assignment.
Mr. Giacchino's score for the animated film "Ratatouille" is a delight. Playful yet elegant and always brisk, it's as sophisticated and rich as the meals the chefs whip up in the French restaurant where much of the action takes place (when it's not in the sewers of Paris, that is). It has its romantic moments and, as Mr. Giacchino did in his score for "The Incredibles," uses jazz for a sly effect -- here, an accordion flits above a double bass and bass clarinet; there, brass seems to bounce off a snappy drum kit. And while this isn't a metric by which a film score should be judged, Mr. Giacchino's is the nominated score that best works outside the context of the film. It bears repeated listening, much like the bright, stylish work of Henry Mancini.
Mr. Howard scored six 2007 films -- "Charlie Wilson's War," "The Great Debaters," "The Lookout," "I Am Legend," "The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep" and the film for which he's Oscar nominated, "Michael Clayton." A conventional thriller often requires an unconventional score, and Mr. Howard provides one.
Here he marries modern synth sounds with classic orchestral strings, and uses near silence as a means to heighten drama and illuminate motive. The effect is icy and disquieting: Mr. Howard's music reflects the protagonist's journey through a legal system with an abhorrent moral code. The sounds that accompany Arthur, the chemically unbalanced attorney played by Tom Wilkinson, are especially effective. The seven-minute movement "I'm Not the Guy You Kill" soars to an almost-unbearable climax.
Best known for his work with Pedro Almodovar, Mr. Iglesias wrote a score for "The Kite Runner" that incorporates the strengths he brings to Mr. Almodovar's films: beauty, sensitivity, a perspective on humanity's darker motives, and enormous musicality. He faced perhaps the greatest challenge among the nominated composers, since he had to compose using both Afghan and Western modes while enriching several scenes that seemed static without the emotional underpinning he provides.
The score revels in its melancholia as we careen through horrifying plot points -- the rape of a child, the stoning of a woman, the threat of torture and death -- that are all given appropriately violent and disquieting augmentation by a composer whose work yearns to reveal his faith in humanity. "The Stadium," a piece that underscores the film's visit to the place where the stoning and other brutal acts occur, is a chilling work for orchestra and electric guitar, while "Hassan Theme" is a lovely transcultural work that hangs in the air rather than concludes.
Mr. Marianelli's music for "Atonement," which won the Golden Globe for Best Original Score, is by turns stirring, romantic and poignant. Formal but never starchy, it crosses the seemingly unbridgeable gap between serene upper-class British life and the violence of war; much as Christopher Hampton's Oscar-nominated screenplay (and Ian McEwen's novel) does, it shows there can be the promise of violence in even the most tranquil settings and a quest for order amid the chaos of war. Several themes emerge from delicate piano notes, including the somber yet exhilarating "Two Figures by a Fountain" and its wry reprise, "Come Back." The clack-clack of a manual typewriter appears, appropriately, as percussion.
The nominated scores are as varied as the films they represent -- a western, an animated comedy set in Paris, a contemporary American legal thriller, a dark journey through the downfall of Afghanistan and a World War II-era romantic tragedy. While Mr. Beltrami is an American born in Fornero, Italy, Mr. Giacchino is American-born and of Italian descent. Mr. Howard is an American who studied at the USC School of Music and was an accomplished rock musician before joining the league of film composers. Mr. Iglesias was born and lives in Spain, and Mr. Marianelli was born in Pisa, Italy, and now lives in London. But perhaps they are not so different from one another: Each is classically trained and willing to serve the story -- as an award- winning film-score composer must.
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Mr. Fusilli is the Journal's rock and pop music critic.
