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Filmtracks Editorial Review:
And a dim story it is. Up until the secondary, false ending added on to the finale of the film, A.I. is nothing short of a suspense and horror story. Williams has scored the darker sides of humanity before, but never for a film in which there is no redeeming quality for any human character. The closest he came was for Presumed Innocent, which is the most similar score to A.I. in Williams' career. The quiet, unnerving terror of the sickening domestic failure in A.I. is even more tragic than the spookier revelations of Presumed Innocent, but Williams scores them similarly. His use of a piano to represent the symbol of the boy and his family is not a revolutionary technique, but Williams has a particularly effective method of combining it with percussive and string sections to create a optimistic harmony in theme while being offset by underlaying disharmony in accompanying sections of the orchestra. The first half of A.I., embroiled in the extremely distasteful and unpleasant inactions of the family which has adopted the artifical boy at the heart of the film, has very few optimistic scenes to offer, and Williams lays on the suspense very well, continuing the plucking uncertainty from Presumed Innocent with much skill. Just as unpleasant as the film is to digest in that first half, Williams' music for those scenes is equally unnerving on album. When the film suddenly transforms into the more expected Kubrick mold of bizarre imagery and illogic, Williams' music becomes a more interesting listen both in the film and on album. The tumultuous string motif, rising and falling with almost a mechanical brutality, was used in the trailers for the film, and it accompanies the horrifying chase sequences quite well. It evokes the same emotions as the most terrifying moments of E.T.'s chase through the woods, and can double in A.I. to represent the massive rising seas that have engulfed much of the planet. The film's Flesh Fair scene, perhaps raising the most intriguing mass social issues of the entire film, is accompanied with the "What About Us?" song, and although it is thankfully not included on the Williams album, it is available on the group's "greatest hits" compilation. The "Rouge City" track on the album contains the most impressive writing that Williams does for the Kubrick aspect of the story. Some of it seems to overlap directly with the music for the abandonment scene, almost to a point where it seems that the two have been switched on album. But Williams' unyielding, brassy fright of such cues as "Cybertronics" and "The Moon Rising" offers a harsher electronic side of Williams' writing that Kubrick might even have appreciated in coordination with Williams' traditional classical styles. While Williams' music is overshadowed by the power of the story for the first hour or so of the film, it begins to assert itself after the mecha boy is abandoned, and it unfortunately toggles over to the sappy, sentimental, Spielberg side of emotions for the controversial ending of the film. The film's failure of being unable to choose between a concentration on the larger social issues of the plot or the dreams of the mecha boy is what causes the ending of the film and score to be a disappointment. As Kubrick would have had it, there certainly wouldn't have been a joyful fulfillment of dreams at the end of the story, and Spielberg's need to tie a nice big bow on the package caused Williams to follow suit. The score becomes harmonious in its final half hour, leaving behind all of the Kubrick-inspired aspects of the score and film that had made both interesting. Williams establishes the mother-like female vocals of Barbara Bonney, operatic in performance, to represent both the Blue Fairy and the mecha boy's adopting mother. With that voice, the score takes on an almost religious tone of fantasy, combining with the piano from the beginning of the score (performing the mother's theme) to provide a hauntingly beautiful aural sense for the remarkable visuals of the final sequence. On album, these moments, in tandem with the two song renditions of Williams' title theme, allow for the only pleasant listening experience. In the film, the heart-wrenching and hopeless portrayal of humanity causes the music to become secondary until the very last scene and the end credits, during which Williams' score finally announces itself for the first time to an audience bombarded for two hours with emotionally disturbing turns of events. The vocal end credits cue almost seems too pleasant for the film. Whatever flaws the score for A.I. has, they are the fault of the extremely flawed plotline of the film. Williams got caught in the middle of a film torn in two opposite directions, and did his best to score each scene appropriately. Thus, whatever failure of the score is not his fault. The underlying horror in his music prevails for the majority of the score, following the extremely frustrating plot of the film with skill. It has been suggested that Williams borrowed motifs significantly for A.I., including minimalistic material from Steve Reich, vocal segments taken from Gyorgy Ligeti, and rhythms of strings from Philip Glass. Whether or not the score will offend the trained classical ear, it suffers from the unhappy and ultimately hopeless fate of the characters in the film, becoming a depressing work all around. Interestingly, the album has been spiced up for a more commercially upbeat audience. While a lengthy album, there remain a few important cues missing from the album, and those which are included are generally out of film order. Williams has managed to arrange the tracks so that all of the unpleasant material is centered at the start of the album, leaving four tracks of the more hope inspiring cues at the end. The enjoyable song performances have nothing to do with the film (where they wouldn't have fit anyway), and are a commercial vehicle for the album. If you haven't seen the film, these final four or five tracks (including the stunning ninth track/end credit cue) can make for a very enjoyable twenty five minutes of listening. If you've been bludgeoned by the horrifying, illogical plot of the story, then perhaps you might have a more difficult time with it. In either case, it is a rare Williams score that works better on album rather than in the heavily flawed film.
Music as heard on album: **** Overall rating: ****
The insert includes a short note from Spielberg, as per usual, but nothing else about the score or film. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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