Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if you can appreciate restrained, solemn performances of traditional bluegrass tunes and a conservative suite of string and piano underscore from Gabriel Yared. Avoid it... if you are expecting either fast paced, enthusiastic bluegrass performances or a robust orchestral score for the Civil War setting. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
Cold Mountain: (Gabriel Yared) Considered a front-runner for a slew of awards in the late 2003 season, Cold Mountain opened to a harsh split of positive and negative reviews, with critics often praising certain aspects of the film as genuine while also slamming entire sequences of it for being contrived and overly-melodramatic. Directed by Academy Award-winner Anthony Minghella (The English Patient and The Talented Mr. Ripley, among others) and based on Charles Frazier's best-selling Civil War novel of the same name, the film tells the story of a wounded confederate soldier (Jude Law) who deserts his unit and makes a perilous journey through North Carolina to be with his pre-war love, Ada (Nicole Kidman). Meanwhile, Ada attempts to survive on her own while reviving her father's farm with the help of a more spirited female survivor, Ruby (Renee Zellweger). The film alternates between treatments of romance, large landscapes, chase sequences, and the horrors of war, and it is generally the inconsistent treatment of these scenes compared to each other that seems to have drawn negative criticism about the project. It was supported by an unusually high budget for a Miramax film, and the soundtrack was immediately thought by the studio to be one of the more successful aspects of the entire production. The genre of music that was chosen for the era and location of the film was a historical variation on bluegrass, as to be expected, and the studio was quick to recognize the potential of that genre in soundtracks after the monumentally huge success of the music from O Brother, Where Art Thou?. Thus, they hired producer T-Bone Burnett (a Grammy-winner for organizing that project) to duplicate the success for Cold Mountain. Miramax, with their sniffers pointed in the direction of a "best song" Oscar nomination or win, even went so far as to hire Elvis Costello and Sting to each write a song for the soundtrack, and despite early indications that they would sing for the occasion, these performances never materialized on album. In the end, a more humble collection of somber bluegrass tunes was combined with an equally somber score by composer Gabriel Yared for the overall package. As you could expect, however, the restrained approach for Cold Mountain makes it a 180 degree turn from the faster-paced enthusiasm of O Brother, Where Art Thou?. The soundtrack in the film and on album alternates between traditional bluegrass pieces and modern bluegrass adaptations of those ideas, all performed by the same, contemporary voices. In some cases, an argument could be made that the style of the vocals is too polished in a contemporary sense to really bring out the historically accurate qualities of the traditional tunes, and bluegrass collectors should be aware of this flaw before diving into this album without hearing its application in the film. Returning for T-Bone Burnett is the voice of Alison Krauss, but this time her performances are so tentative that they lose their appeal. Likewise, the songs performed by Jack White are lackluster in energy and genuine bluegrass spirit. Only in the latter half of the album does a more heartening sound take effect; Cassie Franklin finally puts some defiance into the female vocals, and the two tracks by the Sacred Harp Singers (recorded with fantastic authenticity in an old wooden-framed church) are easily the highlight of the album. All of the bluegrass music will likely seem like a foreign world to score collectors interested in Gabriel Yared's work for the film. There can't be any greater difference between the fiddle, banjo, and mandolin performances by the ensembles for the songs and the orchestral composition for the score. This difference alone causes the album serious trouble, because bluegrass listeners will be bored to death by Yared's typical, meandering string writing. Even for score collectors, the album won't be worth the price for the fifteen minutes (in four tracks) of score material, because it is music that owners of Yared's albums have heard again and again. Having collaborated with the same director for The English Patient (and winning the Oscar for that effort), some might have expected something more than a repetition of his sullen, uninteresting string writing for Sylvia just a few months earlier. But even his title theme, performed in extended sequences by piano and strings, is dragged on and on, taking forever to complete its own statements and giving the whole chamber score a wishy-washy effect on the listener. There is nothing here to indicate that there are chases, battles, or even anything historical about the score. Yared failed to incorporate anything related to the genre of the film, or the bluegrass soundtrack, and he was thus a predictably curious choice to compose music for this film despite his collaboration with the director. Overall, everything seems out of place, and for the package to have worked to any listenable degree, the songs and score needed to be separated into two distinct albums. Yared did release a promotional CD of his score that helped him earn Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations for his work, but this recognition likely came via reputation only, and even score collectors may not be impressed by Yared's promo. For both Yared and Burnett, the lesson was that you sometimes just can't recapture the same magic a second time. ** Track Listings:
Total Time: 63:07
* score track by Gabriel Yared All artwork and sound clips from Cold Mountain are Copyright © 2003, Sony/Columbia. The reviews and notes contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Filmtracks Publications. Audio clips can be heard using RealPlayer but cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 12/19/03, updated 3/16/09. Review Version 4.1 - PHP (Filmtracks Publications). Copyright © 2003-2013, Christian Clemmensen. All rights reserved. |
