Buy it... if you seek the most powerful score of Anne Dudley's career, a remarkably heavy and tragic orchestral lamentation that alternates between deeply solemn, sparse interludes and extremely engaging action and redemption highlights.

Avoid it... if you have no interest in attempting to casually enjoy the most brutal and challenging of soundtracks, because this score matches the intensity and emotional weight of the film without fail.

Dudley

American History X: (Anne Dudley) Powerful messages about American culture have existed in many forms throughout the history of cinema, but rarely with the overwhelming punch to the gut delivered by Tony Kaye's highly revered American History X. The 1998 film depicted the tragic fates of two brothers in Southern California who become involved with neo-Nazi street gangs, actively participating in brutal crimes against minorities. The older brother (Edward Norton) does jail time for killing a pair of black men attempting to steal his car, but while there the white supremacist renounces his ways and befriends a black man, causing him to suffer from vicious physical attacks (including rape) upon himself. After his release, he struggles to extricate his younger brother (Edward Furlong) from the gang, finally achieving this end with the help of the boy's school. The price paid for this salvation is steep, however, and American History X is clearly not recommended viewing for anyone expecting anything more soothing than the most bittersweet conclusion imaginable. Despite critical acclaim and an Academy Award nomination for Norton, American History X was not a notable fiscal success. Its director also stirred up quite a bit of controversy in his public disputes with New Line Cinema over the final cut of the film. It was originally a drug-dominated story, concentrating less on the reformation and more on common topics within the drug sub-genre. Three generations of American History X exist, the first two by Kaye and the final a desperate cut made by the producer and Norton in defiance of Kaye, who not only wanted to rearrange the entire film a third time over the course of another year, but sued unsuccessfully to have his name removed from the project. So damaging was this episode for the veteran music video director that he would go more than a decade before directing another feature film. Aside from the post-production nightmares facing the film, however, American History X remains an extremely compelling experience with strong acting performances that extend from Norton to a solid supporting cast. One of its undeniable assets is Anne Dudley's score, a counter-intuitive tackling of the subject with distinctly classical sensibilities. The British composer was best known at the time for her participation in the band Art of Noise, though her surprising (and widely considered undeserved) Oscar win for The Full Monty in 1998 brought her a brief stint in major film scoring for a handful of years thereafter.

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Without much question, American History X is universally acknowledged to be Dudley's finest film music composition of this period. The director requested a sorrowful score of immense orchestral scope, and the composer responded accordingly, casting aside any popular expectations that a film like this would receive bland, minimalistic music. The most lasting impression that Dudley's work will give you is its incredibly oppressive general tone, relentlessly churning in the lowest regions of the ensemble for much of the suspense and conversation material in the story. Even within this limited spectrum, Dudley still manages to give her music a dynamic scope that conveys brutal force of a fluid, evolving variety. The tempi are slow, the themes even slower, and the agonizing redemption at the end the slowest. A boy's choir is the sole salvation in terms of harmonic beauty, existing in snippets throughout the score as the representation of the younger brother's hope until the highly disturbing "Benedictus" at the end, which uses the Latin performances of the group to imply a religious element. The tone of the ensemble is a more memorable aspect of American History X than Dudley's themes, the reliance on harsh bass performers and subtly churning rhythms most reminiscent of Howard Shore's music for brooding thrillers. The thematic material is presented immediately in the title suite, "American History X," but outside of a few notable solo performances, as in "The Assignment," it goes largely unnoticed in the murky environment of the remainder of the score. It has always been remarkable to contemplate how unfriendly Dudley was able to make this score, especially in the striking layering of pounding, jabbing percussive hits featured in many of the tracks. That said, there are a couple of cues in which she brings the ensemble together for highly cohesive and satisfying action sequences. In both "Playing to Win" and "Raiders," she offers exhibits of grand orchestral harmony not much unlike Patrick Doyle's adventure music of the era. The entirety of "Playing to Win" is simply remarkable and a breath of fresh air in an otherwise perpetually gloomy portion of the score; it perfectly exaggerates the turf game on screen between blacks and whites as though it was a clash of thousands on an ancient battlefield. The only brief moment of optimism in the score comes in "Two Brothers," a touching scene that injects a lovely solo piano to hint at the doomed hope of regular suburban life. Overall, the music for American History X, like the film it accompanies, will be too intensely morbid for most listeners to enjoy casually, but it is a superior work that requires your appreciation and respect. Only the lack of a more clearly developed, linear evolution of themes restrains it from the highest rating. ****   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download