Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... only if you are a John Williams completist and appreciate even the composer's most unassuming and mundane efforts. Avoid it... if you, like most others, are baffled by Williams' inability to conjure any magic, romance, or other spirit for this film's subject matter. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
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. ** Track Listings:
Total Time: 68:31
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