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Amerika: (Basil Poledouris) Extremely controversial for
its time, it is difficult to look back upon
Amerika and imagine that
a considerable portion of the American public viewed the television series
as one of realistic possibilities. Running over seven nights for a mammoth
14 hours total,
Amerika was a "what if" novel about how individuals
(representing the American spirit through their actions and reactions) would
respond to the Soviet invasion and occupation of the United States. Despite
the sensationalism applied to the reputation of the film at the time,
Amerika is not a film depicting the actual military attack and seige.
Rather, the point of the series was to concentrate on the average American's
reaction to the post-war occupation a full ten years after the initial
invasion. Thus, the series is a "people story" rather than a massive
political statement or action film. The somber spirit of the film (including
the execution of primary characters and, not to be forgotten, the entire
American legislative body) is tempered by the slow, but determined rebellion
of the Americans through their heartland values and stubborn will. Composer
Basil Poledouris would extend his collaboration with director Donald Wrye by
writing essentially the equivalent of seven feature films-worth of music.
The seven different chapters of
Amerika are slow to develop, and
don't always offer exact continuity from one chapter to the next. Thus,
along with the noted cinematography of the series, one of Poledouris'
objectives was to provide a score that would maintain a consistency between
the chapters of the series. With the production of the film protested and
lengthened due to the scope of its magnitude, Poledouris had enough time in
1987 to compose an untold number of hours of music, all of which written for
and performed by a full orchestral ensemble. While the two-minute title
theme would be best recognized because of its multiple appearances,
Poledouris' score would be better remembered by film score collectors as one
of highly personalized and dramatic character themes for individual threads
in the series.
Despite Poledouris' reputation for writing some of the most
masculine war music between 1982 an 1990,
Amerika should not be
confused with that body of work. There are two or three more militaristic
cues in the series, often driven by the accompaniment of tapping snares,
tingling synth samples, and electric bass, but do not expect the score to
have any relation to the robust, bombastic Russian material that would
eventually become Poledouris' calling card in
The Hunt for Red
October. Hints of Poledouris' rhythmic synthetics in the later score
would be heard in "Humiliation of Alethea," but not much elsewhere. In fact,
Poledouris chose not to provide much of a Soviet influence on the music
whatsoever, restraining his slight Russian note progressions for cues such
as "U.N.S.S.U." and "The Dance Begins," the latter of which maxing out with
a single barrage of timpani after an eloquent, yet ominous string motif.
Instead, Poledouris chooses the purely Americana approach for his music,
bordering on times between his own heavily dramatic brass-accompanied
woodwind themes and the occasional John Barry-like expanse of strings in
simplistic performances of theme. The movement of the score is quite slow,
with a level of weighty drama that would foreshadow
Les Miserables,
but without the immense power of bass or resolution of focus. On album, the
score meanders through its first third before its gripping material begins
to develop (perhaps due to the slow start of the series). With the overall
movement of
Amerika restrained in pace, cues such as "Ceremony
Montage," with one of Poledouris' more inspired string/woodwind rhythms
building in momentum to a fully orchestral statement, are the highlights.
The sensitivity of the majority of character themes, while rotated nicely
through the different sections of the orchestra, doesn't offer a really true
or diverse taste of American character... which is an odd miss of the target
for Poledouris. Rather than instilling his score with the weight and power
of the American spirit as a whole, Poledouris hopes that the smaller,
sectional performances of themes create a whole through their common threads
of decency and patriotism.
Once you've heard Poledouris tackle the sounds of war,
rebellion, and peace with greater orchestral depth in subsequent
compositions,
Amerika's score, despite the obvious strengths inherent
in its length, doesn't resonate as well nearly 20 years later. Apart from
the film, the music for
Amerika has never been commercially released,
although it has always been sought after by Poledouris collectors in search
of his larger orchestral works. A five-minute suite of music from the series
was included on Poledouris' promotional compilations of the 1990's, and has
been redistributed on more recent bootlegged copies of that promo. A
44-minute bootleg with good sound quality (but no track names) was leaked
sometime in the late 1990's and has been in circulation on the secondary
market between die-hard score collectors. In 2003 and 2004, Prometheus
Records released several Poledouris scores of the 1980's that had only been
released in previous limited editions or never at all.
Amerika was
one of these scores, offered in August of 2004 as the first of Prometheus'
Club series albums in a long time. Despite advance word of
Amerika's
release an entire year before its release date, the 3,000-copy
Amerika album (the 19th of their series) pulled the Prometheus Club
series out of a deep coma that had lasted more than a year after the release
of John Barry's uncharacteristic
The White Buffalo score. A generous
and well-balanced product, the 76-minute Prometheus album releases the
earlier bootlegs of all responsibility, and should serve as the definite
album for Poledouris' score. It's a solid entry in his career, but the
thickness and depth of
Amerika is not as great as you might remember
from the series. If you have limited funds, then Prometheus' recent albums
for Poledouris'
Flesh + Blood and
Cherry 2000 may better meet
your expectations. Still, for collectors of the composer, this fine
treatment of
Amerika should not be easily dismissed.
Score as Heard in Series: ****
Score on Bootleg Albums: ***
Score on 2004 Prometheus Album: ****
Overall: ****
| Bias Check: | For Basil Poledouris reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating
is 3.48 (in 30 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.42
(in 27,554 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
The 2004 Prometheus album contains extensive information about the score and series, and the packaging is hand numbered.
