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Always: (John Williams) It is rare that either
director Steven Spielberg or composer John Williams produces a total
failure of a film or score, and even more rare when they do it together.
When searching for the bombs in their collaboration, you can quickly
identify
1941 and
Always atop the list. For Spielberg,
it's easy to see how his judgment became clouded when eagerly assembling
this film. He had always been fan of the 1944 Spencer Tracy film
A
Guy Named Joe, in which Tracy is a pilot who is killed during the
war and sent back to the world of the living (by Heaven) to inspire a
younger pilot. The true tragedy, however, is that the younger pilot then
falls in love with the dead pilot's girlfriend and there's nothing Tracy
can do about it. The film was one which Spielberg cites as inspiration
for him to become a filmmaker, and he was surprised on the set of
Jaws to learn that actor Richard Dreyfuss was also a huge fan of
the same film (claiming at the time to have seen it 35 times). Many
years later, they finally got together to work on a remake of that film,
changing the setting from wartime 1940's to 1980's firefighting in
Montana. The planes are much the same, elegantly gliding through the
smoke of the fires to drop their loads of retardant. It is during one of
these runs that Dreyfuss puts out a fire approaching his downed buddy
and, in the process of saving that friend's life, crashes himself into
the forest. There he encounters an angel who informs him of the task he
has ahead of him before he can ascend to Heaven. That angel is none
other than an all-white clad Audrey Hepburn, in her final role before
cancer would claim her life a couple of years later. Unfortunately, with
hokey dialogue, special effects that are so impressive that they are
unrealistic, and a complete lack of genuine urgency in the actions of
Dreyfuss,
Always became a film that had no purpose other than to
be a remake. It was uniformally blasted by critics and ignored by
audiences.
On John Williams' part, the maestro really didn't do
anything to try to correct that doomed path. His score is unintrusive,
uninspired, and uncentered, providing none of the excitement, romance,
or magic necessary to elevate the film beyond its mundane confines. It
fails on a number of levels, in fact. First, he doesn't capture the
essence of flight in
Always. Old bomber planes have always had a
romantic element to their flight, and Jerry Goldsmith very effectively
addressed this emotion in
Forever Young a few years later.
Williams, however, doesn't evoke any soaring element here, nor does his
limited action material in the film stir up any significant amount of
excitement. Once the primary character meets his angel, the score takes
a back seat in the film, often consisting of only minimalistic
contribution from a few meandering woodwinds, piano, and electronic
instruments. The only notable exception is the dread-inducing "Rescue
Operation," a cue that doesn't feature Williams usual high standard of
dissonance in such kinds of writing. Lightly droning electronic chimes,
wavering string notes that last minutes, and thematic development that
is so miniscule that it goes barely noticed occupies much of the playing
time. The music is so soft that you can actually hear a certain amount
of studio noise in the latter half of "Seeing Dorinda," including the
musicians shuffling around in their seats. For a film with definite
supernatural or religious aspects,
Always is completely devoid of
magic and thus genuine romance. It's difficult to imagine that for
Audrey Hepburn's long awaited, and assumed-to-be final return to the
screen, Williams was unable to provide her heavenly character with any
kind of redeeming musical identity whatsoever. It's also interesting to
compare the approach of this score to
A.I. Artificial
Intelligence a decade later. Both involve the concepts of love,
death, commitment, and rebirth, and whereas Williams treats these ideas
with great distance in
Always, he would pour on the emotional
syrup in
A.I. with much better results. The album for
Always begins with an array of light rock and country songs,
followed by a mostly lifeless Williams' score that is as disappointing
as any in that great era for the composer.
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| Bias Check: | For John Williams reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating
is 3.73 (in 68 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.6
(in 334,382 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert notes include no extra information about the score.
