Buy it... only if you appreciate the restrained tone of Cliff Eidelman's character drama scores of the late 1990's.

Avoid it... if you expect Eidelman to use the opportunity of this weighty cultural drama to revisit the engaging tone of his late 1980's works.

Eidelman

An American Rhapsody: (Cliff Eidelman) An arthouse film from writer and director Eva Gardos that briefly gained international attention in the summer of 2001, An American Rhapsody is a character drama about a family torn apart by the harsh political rule imposed upon Hungarians in the 1950's. A young Scarlett Johansson plays a teenager who, based on Gardos' own life story, traverses both America and Hungary in an attempt to determine her own identity after her troubled, split childhood between the two highly disparate countries and cultures. Despite a generally positive critical response, the film never maintained enough lasting acclaim to propel it into mainstream awards status, and the score for the film by Cliff Eidelman likewise faded into immediate obscurity. For Eidelman, An American Rhapsody represented a return to the big screen that many of his listeners had been awaiting for three years. His previous feature film score and album release of his work was for One True Thing in 1998, and since that time, Eidelman had been occupying his time with obscure television and concert pieces. Unflattering rumors as to why Eidelman had been left out of the opportunity to score a mainstream film abounded at the time, and some scoffed at the small scale of An American Rhapsody. Nevertheless, the composer was back, and his touch for intimate, emotional writing with a moderate orchestral ensemble had not been lost in that time. The story of An American Rhapsody called for yet another introverted type of score from Eidelman, a common event for a man who, in the 1990's, had become best known for achieving such scores with smaller budgets and restricted ensembles. In the case of An American Rhapsody, the orchestral ensemble is of limited size, though the style of writing doesn't need the group to be any larger. Eidelman explained at the time that his intent with the flow of this score was to simply follow the internalized, emotional rollercoaster of the film. Thus, there is no dominant theme or motif with which to easily identify this entire work, and while the music is functional in its general constructs, it is ultimately frightfully anonymous.

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The scenes representing the "Iron Fist," both in fact and recollection, offer the only wider representation of darkness or oppression in the score, yielding its few full ensemble expressions of traumatic harmony. The majority of scenes contain very restrained, quiet material, however, dominated by simple, though pleasant string themes drawn out to an expanded rhythm that would be appropriate for period setting. The slight classicism in Eidelman's style is understandable, but it doesn't particularly represent 1960's Los Angeles very effectively. There are very lengthy sequences of barely audible string meanderings, most likely accompanying dialogue, and large sections of this score can pass without much notice. The title track, representing the finale of the score, presents the clearest and most satisfying performance of Eidelman's themes, but it amounts to only a few minutes in length. The album ends with traditional songs conducted by Eidelman that are, in fact, more interesting that the original score itself. On the whole, An American Rhapsody is a disappointment for Eidelman collectors who waited three years to hear another score from an artist once considered to be one of the industry's brightest rising stars. The saving grace for the score (if it is enough) is a collection of sporadic piano performances, which Eidelman gracefully handles as per his usual standard. During the darker scenes of displacement, the piano sets a pulsating base tone (and the rolls in "There Was an Iron Fist" are a nice touch of elegance), and its solo performances in the upper ranges are flawlessly presented. But given what we know about Eidelman and his experience with scores about persecution and loss, An American Rhapsody doesn't take any chances, nor does it offer anything new to Eidelman's career that had not been heard before. It may function well enough as basic accompaniment, but even as such, it isn't as provocative as anyone would expect given the weighty dramatic reach of the film. Because it instead plays as mundane filler material, which very well may be what the producers or director of the film asked for, it could leave even Eidelman's ardent fans a bit cold. A solid work, but an often uninteresting listening experience on album. **   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For Cliff Eidelman reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.29 (in 17 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.2 (in 7,740 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.