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| • | Newest Major Reviews: | . | • | This Week's Most Popular Reviews: | • | Best-Selling Albums: | ||
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1. Nim's Island 2. The Life Before Her Eyes 3. Horton Hears a Who! 4. Leatherheads 5. The Spiderwick Chronicles | . | . |
1. Moulin Rouge 2. Gladiator 3. POTC: Curse of the Black Pearl 4. Star Wars: A New Hope 5. Edward Scissorhands |
6. Pearl Harbor 7. Schindler's List 8. Titanic 9. Braveheart 10. Home Alone | . | . |
1. Varèse Sarabande 25th 2. The Last of the Mohicans 3. Legends of the Fall 4. Schindler's List 5. LOTR: Return of the King (Set) |
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Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if you would enjoy hearing an intelligent musical rendition of George Orwell's classical tale with obvious and enticing attention to detail. Avoid it... if you prefer your singing animals not have a depressing Russian anthem and choir in their performances. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
Animal Farm: (Richard Harvey) Once the technical ability was rendered in 1995's Babe, it was inevitable that the most famous adult "talking animal" story of all time would applied to live action. George Orwell's 1945 novel Animal Farm is revered as a bleak, but prophetic companion piece to his 1984 story. It is an allegory for the Russian Revolution and the eventual pitfalls of communism to follow, and in 1999, the TNT cable channel took most of Orwell's story to the small screen. While much of Orwell's vision is darkly dramatized in the farm setting, with the animals overthrowing their British manor masters, some liberties were taken at the end of the story to update Orwell's tale to mirror modern events (mainly, the fall of communism and tearing down of stone walls). Purists of the story were horrified, and the film's depressing nature (before the Americans save the day in an ending that defeats the purpose of the story) makes it less suitable to the children's audience that would otherwise be inclined to watch a film with talking and singing animals. Thus, the film failed to satisfy either end, and you end up with a Russian allegory of the most serious kind that is littered with upbeat performances by singing animals that was apparently meant to satisfy younger audiences. The score by Richard Harvey had to walk a similar tightrope, conveying the worker's revolt while also producing music that was compatible with his own songs for the performing animals. Instead of Americanizing the music (or intentionally producing a neo-classical soup of strange stylistic combinations, as had been done with the film version of Orwell's 1984), Harvey doesn't at all try to hide the allegory for Western audiences who may not be familiar with the story's intentions. For such uninformed viewers --people who were completely clueless as to the allegory and turned the film on the TV for their four-year-olds-- the inclusion of grand, Russian anthems, hymn, and battle music probably seems grossly out of place. But Richard Harvey hit the nail right on the head. If you excuse the temptation to write songs for the animals, the score is large and robust enough to actually accompany a film depicting the actual humans of the Russian Revolution. If you take out a few of the light woodwinds and change a few rhythms here and there (taking all references to a light, British setting out of the equation) and you get a score with all the weighty drama necessary to represent the real event itself, placing the score in an even more curious place when you once again consider that it's a "talking animal" film. Harvey coins an emotional anthem for animals, one that goes from oppression ("Dumb Animals") to full glory ("Commandments") and then, finally, to performances of tragic expanse ("Jones Destroys the Windmill") as the pigs of the farm ruin the animal utopia. Hearing this theme mutate through the score, including appearances in song form, is a delight, because Harvey manages to take the same theme and portray it at every emotional level that the film requires. The falsely triumphant performance of the title theme in "Glorious Leader Napoleon!" is perhaps the highlight of the theme's evolution (or revolution, whichever you prefer), and also proves that songs in these circumstances don't have to be the fluffy affairs that the genre usually entails. Harvey pulls off the Russian marches with convincing power, remarkably conjuring a theme that doesn't seem to raise memories of any other score, and utilizing the Budapest Radio Choir to provide the expected Russian chorus that the genre demands. More importantly, the orchestral performances of these driving, Russian movements avoid the usual problems of similar modern statements. So many listeners associate deep male choirs, or any adult choir in the minor key, with Hans Zimmer's programmed sound. Harvey's more traditional approach here is more effective in portraying a realistic angle to the story's hard edge. The lyrics of these chants and marches are in English, which may seem out of place given the underlying music, but considering the setting of the film in Britain, the language is acceptable. There is a considerable amount of thundering battle music in Animal Farm, and when the full orchestra and choir aren't squashing you with their might, Harvey provides percussion-pounding dramatic underscore through nearly every other cue of the composition (his use of percussion carries over well from his score for Arabian Nights). The only purely positive romp, "The Harvest and the Flag," is also of note, introducing a heroic theme for the workers themselves and their great productivity. A reprise of this theme is briefly heard at the very end of the story, exposing the slight, but significant change to the story's unhappy ending. On album, the progression of the story is very evident, and you can almost follow Orwell's plot in your head as you hear Harvey take you on a most effective musical journey through the same allegory. Unfortunately, that album from Varèse Sarabande is disappearing from the market, so a hasty search for it would be advisable. Harvey succeeds in his effort to produce convincing revolution music, deeply rooted in Russian dramatism, without either referencing other composers' take on the genre (including Basil Poledouris, most notably) or allowing the music to be sucked into a Babe-like atmosphere of kiddie mentality. Considering the lack of vast resources for the project, the result is outstanding, and only a larger number of performers in the ensemble would have been able to improve upon the recording. *****
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