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The English Patient: (Gabriel Yared) In a year of
mediocrity and undemanding blockbusters, Anthony Minghella's
The
English Patient swept through the Academy Awards in 1996 with superb
acting performances highlighting a strong adaptation of Michael
Ondaatje's lauded novel. The narrative of the film tells of two love
stories intertwined in the 1930's and 1940's, fantastically shot against
the backdrop of North Africa and Italy. The film shifts between the
past, present, and future at a whim, and requires the extremely
compelling performances of Ralph Fiennes, Kristin Scott Thomas, Juliette
Binoche, and Willem Dafoe to sustain interest in a romantic tragedy that
unfolds without immediate synchrony. To say that
The English
Patient is tragic would be an understatement; the film takes
melodrama to a level not often achieved, and don't expect the minimal
redemption at the end of the film to salvage your mood. Minghella
considered the music for
The English Patient quite extensively
before production began; his taste for various classical and folk music
would assist in shaping the film's multicultural influences. He would
look towards Western classicism of a Baroque style on one side while
also exploring Hungarian folk music that, for most common listeners, is
indistinguishable from the perception of Arabic or North African music.
He assembled several pieces along these lines for source usage in the
film, while his wife, who coordinated the dance sequences for
The
English Patient, suggested the swing songs that would also be used
as source material for the production. The director placed the same
level of importance on the underscore that would tie all of these ideas
together; he claims that the only composer he had in mind from the
conceptual step of the production was Gabriel Yared, the Lebanese-born
classical-style artist working in France on internationally obscure
romances at the time. After hiring Yared, Minghella insisted that the
composer be a part of early production and attend various shooting
sessions. He also instructed Yared to adapt and integrate the sounds of
both the Baroque and Hungarian elements into his work, all the while
infusing modern romanticism into the love story.
The resulting score would steal a Golden Globe and
Academy Award away from a field of more deserving candidates that year,
and Yared himself would go on to international fame that would land him
major scoring assignments for years to come. What he provided for
The
English Patient was the right score for the right film at the right
time. In the film, it fits well with the fatalistic and brooding nature
of the plot, resulting in catapulted sales of the album over the
long-term. For many film score enthusiasts, however, this score
completely fails to function outside of the film's ambient personality,
and in many regards, it's one of those rare cases where the film
completely carries the score. Between the source music during the dance
scenes and the piano performances by Binoche's character as integral to
the plot, it's easy to imagine why the music from
The English
Patient was memorable enough to warrant the Oscar for most voters.
But this success was only fractionally due to Yared's contribution. The
score is extraordinarily restrained, which is why it doesn't work for
most score collectors on album. He establishes two themes and develops
them very sparsely throughout the work. Each features a power inherent
in its structure, but Yared is sure to tail off each of their
performances due to the unrealized love in the story. As such, both
themes promise much in dramatic stature but deliver surprisingly little.
The overarching theme of despair exists too infrequently to really
define the score. Introduced on solo woodwind midway through the opening
"The English Patient," the theme's only other major performance for the
full orchestral ensemble would wait until "As Far as Florence" at the
end. The second theme is the more yearning love affair, structured with
the same broad strokes as a John Barry effort, and you can first hear
this idea later in "The English Patient." That opening cue, serving as a
suite of all the major ideas, opens with the solo Hungarian vocals of
Márta Sebestyén, which may be too grating for most Western
ears, and concludes with a brief statement of the despair and loneliness
motif, heard on what seems to be a harpsichord and featuring a droning
bass note of impending doom. Several other motifs are teased out during
the score, but Yared never states them with enough deliberateness to
make them effective tools of affiliation.
The love theme is typically considered the easiest
identifier of Yared's work. It receives its first full realization in
"Swoon, I'll Catch You" and receives a tender touch on piano in "Read Me
to Sleep." Lengthy performances for this theme on strings would grace
"The Cave of Swimmers" and "As Far as Florence." But even in these
swells of passion, Yared's score fails to muster much energy. With a
film depicting a frustrating tale of lost passion and doomed fate, the
score follows in those exact footsteps. Never building to its full
potential in emotion, each cue typically fades away to meanderings
barely audible. Compared to the mesmerizing material that Yared would
eventually produce for such dramas as
Message in a Bottle and
beyond, he wastes the power and elegance of the players from The Academy
of St. Martin in the Fields in
The English Patient. The presence
of the group seems to be based more on reputation for adept classical
performances rather than the talent necessary to bring Yared's
composition to life. The recording fails to exhibit any of the vibrance
that the ensemble is capable of evoking; if anything, the score could
have been performed with equal effectiveness by a studio group. Despite
its noble and romantic intentions, the entire score fails to really
capture the essence of any of the characters, and yet, in a very fitting
way, it very well accompanies the desolate and lonely sands of the
desert. Thus, you have to choose your poison. On album, the marginally
interesting solos assist in breaking up the monotony; the vocals of
Márta Sebestyén, the Hungarian folk artist, add a very
brief sense of exotic setting, and John Constable's piano solos further
develop the solitary emotions of the film. The occasional sprinkling of
period songs causes distress because of their eclectic nature, resulting
in an even more disjointed listening experience. Fans of arthouse films
will find merit in the album as a souvenir from the film, though most
listeners closer to the score collecting world will find it
uninteresting, uninvolving, and underdeveloped. For a film about sorrow,
alienation, and fate, the score is a great match. But who would want to
listen to
The English Patient repeatedly on album when there are
so many more complex and melodramatic musical tragedies available for
that mood?
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| Bias Check: | For Gabriel Yared reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating
is 3.11 (in 10 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.29
(in 17,992 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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