Buy it... if restrained but respectful orchestral Holocaust scores of harmonic resonance entice you to turn up the volume and appreciate their stark beauty.

Avoid it... if the employment of a solo violin to represent the plight of the Jews during this era has become too much of a cliche for your ears to handle.

Howard

Defiance: (James Newton Howard) Veteran director Ed Zwick gives audiences another history lesson involving an obscure wartime event in Defiance, a depiction of the real-life events detailed in historian Nechama Tec's 1993 book. During World War II, a trio of Jewish brothers in Belarus decide to elude Nazi efforts by taking refuge in their dense local woods where, eventually, they lead a group of over a thousand others. Testing the limits of their endurance by braving harsh conditions, these individuals form a camp that remarkably succeeded in its task despite Nazi aerial bombing and incursions by land. The film stirred early hopes of Oscar gold, though slow pacing and lack of emotional engagement with the audience were cited early as detractions awaiting the film's wide release at the end of 2008. When considering the music for Defiance, Zwick turned once again to his successful Blood Diamond collaborator, James Newton Howard. The director and composer had considerable discussions about what distinct instrumental personality to convey in the score. While the violin has long been known to accurately represent that historical age of the Jewish culture, its use by John Williams and others in well known productions about the atrocities of World War II gave Zwick and Howard some pause. They weighed the possibilities of using a cello, clarinet, and even traditional Klezmer music. Though, in the end, the allure of the violin proved to be too powerful. Thus entered the young sensation Joshua Bell, whose performances on the instrument in 1999's The Red Violin contributed to John Corigliano's Academy Award win for the work. Still, the composer and director were cautious in their application of music into the picture. "It is essentially a minimalist score, with a substantial amount of what you'd call ambiance to it," Howard said. "The music in all of Edward's work has been a very strong component; the spotting, where the music is used, how its used, is restrained." The final result of Howard's work employed only 50 to 60 musicians and utilized both the violin solos and a few sparse performances by the cimbalom for distinction. Simple harmonies were Howard's primary intent, allowing the voice of Bell's instrument to, as Howard continued, "express the great longing and loss which is so strong in the story."

Indeed, the majority of the score for Defiance exists in an environment of respectful restraint, sometimes as minimal in volume as the lone, slow tapping of a bass drum. There is very little in terms of dynamic layers to the music; Howard is more comfortable exploring singular, linear melodic thoughts rather than developing them in counterpoint or by manipulation of their structures. When the score is not rumbling in the depths of soft, slight dissonance, Howard usually provides performances of one of the score's four main themes. The most attractive of these ideas, likely representing the plight of the Jews and infused with character by Bell's solos, is the extremely lyrical theme heard early in "Exodus," "Escaping the Ghetto," in the latter half of "Nothing is Impossible," and at the end of "The Bielski Brothers." This is the heart of the score, owing not only to Bell's extremely fluid, weighty, and evocative performances, but also in its extremely elegant progressions. The sense of doom is captured by Howard in a second theme of adversity that is aimed at the darker, encroaching forces; heard extensively in "Defiance Main Titles," "Make Them Count," plaintively in "Police Station," and at the outset of "Nothing is Impossible," the ominous tones of this theme are carried by the lowest regions of the brass section in conjunction with bass strings. The spirit of these two main themes is juxtaposed when their representative instruments, while not actually performing the elegant violin theme clearly, battle at the one-minute mark in the opening titles cue. Two secondary themes are seemingly related in their intent to address character development in the story. The softer love-theme variant is heard lightly at the beginning of both "Tuvia Kisses Lilka" and "The Bielski Brothers," featuring a progression of simple melodrama that raises memories of Blood Diamond. The second theme, which develops out of the prior idea immediately in "The Bielski Brothers," also occupies the middle portions of "Camp Montage" and stirs a feeling of hope in its full ensemble performances in both cases. These sequences, and especially the one in the album's final cue, are reminiscent of the redemptive and slightly victorious quality heard in the closing cue in The Interpreter (though obviously with different soloist accents.

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The score definitely takes a fair amount of time to really establish its themes (outside of the cold, bass region one representing the approaching death), but by the last trio of tracks on the album release for Defiance, Howard allows each to flourish in their maturity. The highlight of the score is easily the lengthy "Nothing is Impossible," which opens powerfully with the theme of dread before yielding to several performances of the primary violin theme over satisfyingly resonating bass string accompaniment. The use of harmonic brass counterpoint over crescendos of thematic expressions in this cue are also reminiscent of The Interpreter's final cue, and they are equally pleasant to the ears. The most interesting key to the success of both this cue, as well as "Exodus" and a few others, is the incorporation of an ostinato on the violin that is almost as expressive in its churning mechanisms as the straight forward performances of the theme itself. Howard collectors will recall that this extremely graceful style of violin ostinato was employed with great beauty in The Village. There are individual, often short portions of Defiance that compare favorably to that material in The Village (though the rendering is a bit more sparse here), and it wouldn't be surprising if the majority of listeners return to these sequences most frequently when revisiting this score. Also of note in Defiance are a few remarkable sequences of action and dissonant crescendos; the former element is heard most prominently in "The Bielski Otriad" and is merely average in Howard's career. The sharp and difficult "Bella and Zus" and "The Wedding" are detractions. On the whole, the only general weakness of Howard's score is the fragmentation of the score's themes; with so many identities at work in Defiance, he doesn't quite wrap them into a package that would allow one to truly define the spirit of the picture. The theme performed by Bell is the closest such identity, though its placement on album is perhaps too slight to make a memorable punch. Otherwise, Defiance is a gorgeous score that requires close attention, excessive volume for many of its softer cues, and an appreciation of emotionally charged violin ostinatos and thematic performances that may border on cliche (but function well nevertheless). Howard's prospects for this awards season appear strong. ****   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

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For James Newton Howard reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.31 (in 53 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.16 (in 58,041 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.