Earthsea: (Jeff Rona) Attempting to continue drawing on
the massive popularity of recent television hits in the fantasy genre such
as
Children of Dune and
The Mists of Avalon, Hallmark
Entertainment and the Sci-Fi Channel bring Ursula K. Le Guin's world of
Earthsea to the small screen. Known alternatively as
The Legend of
Earthsea, the magical, medieval fantasy universe created by Le Guin is
comparable in its wizardry and sorcery to J.R.R. Tolkien's lengthier
Lord
of the Rings tales. The basic premise involves a young, talented, but
immature wizard who must do everything from control his own powers to
reunite humanity and bring world peace. The plot is familiar to fantasy
veterans, as are the creatures, locations, and characters. With material
taken from the first two books of Le Guin's classic series, the four-hour
Hallmark/Sci-Fi Channel production is ambitious in the amount of material it
attempts to squeeze into the series, and still omits plotlines that might
disappoint fans of the books. Premiering on the Sci-Fi Channel on December
13 and 14, 2004, the series came and went without much of the hype you
usually hear about these productions. Since the premieres of
The
Odyssey and
Merlin (both from Hallmark) in the 1997-1998 seasons,
these films have typically hit the small screen with much fanfare. With poor
reviews and luke warm advertising,
Earthsea began faded away not long
after its debut. The musical scores for prior fantasy series, from Trevor
Jones'
Merlin to Lee Holdridge's
The Mists of Avalon and Brian
Tyler's
Children of Dune, have sold very well and remained popular
long after their debuts. All have been released on CD by the Varèse
Sarabande label, as is
Earthsea, but Jeff Rona's product this time
around is not as spectacular as in the past.
A veteran of television scoring, Jeff Rona is equally
experienced in the recording and sampling of various ethnic sounds, and this
talent in particular is what interested director Rob Lieberman in hiring
Rona for the task. Lieberman requested that Rona write an appropriately epic
title theme for the opening of the series, but then advised a more worldly
and varied approach for the underscore. The intriguing result, hopefully,
would help differentiate
Earthsea from the many fantasy series that
came before, whether the setting necessitated a Celtic sound, Middle-Eastern
flair, or traditional Medieval bombast. Rona's title theme is elegant and
impressive, utilizing a simple melody with large-scale orchestral and vocal
muscle. The small vocal group has a distinctly African sound that you hear
from the Adiemus albums, and despite being an intriguing and distinct sound
in and of itself, that group of vocal performers is largely absent from the
rest of the score. Aside from some sporadic references, the title theme is
also absent from much of the effort, leaving
Earthsea to the mass of
instrumentally schizophrenic underscore. Rona's work wanders about the
landscape of world music, but not in a flamboyant or memorable fashion. In
fact, for a series and score supposedly of an epic scope, the score is
disappointingly restrained during much of its length. A potentially
momentous scene such as "A Lesson Learned" lacks grip in its string theme
performance, perhaps due to a lack of inspirational performance by the
ensemble or maybe a compositional underachievement. There is practically no
action material present (the brass make a notable appearance in "Sailing"),
and a moment of horror or enchantment ("The Book of Spells") is tackled with
frightfully loud dissonance. The somewhat new age vocal approach that many
composers have used for this genre (with even Howard Shore working with Enya
for the big screen) is also largely absent here; only in the powerful
"Sparrowhawk" and finale "Light Over Earthsea" cue does it make a welcomed
intrusion. Overall, Rona's
Earthsea gets off to a great start, but
stews and stumbled throughout its underscore without clear direction or
purpose. Given the vast array of fabulous resources at Rona's disposal, such
an uninspired end result is truly unfortunate. On the upside (perhaps) is
the fact that a recording with the Slovakia Radio Symphony allowed for an
abnormally lengthy Varèse Sarabande album.
**
The insert includes a note from the director about the score and film.
