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Field of Dreams: (James Horner) Based on writer W.P.
Kinsella's book "Shoeless Joe," Phil Alden Robinson's
Field of Dreams
is as close to an Americana film about religion as you can possibly get. The
popular flick with Kevin Costner in the lead role abandons all common sense
and throws magic into the cornfields of Iowa. When Costner's farmer hears
voices telling him to build a baseball diamond on his land with the promise
that the ghosts of famous baseball players will inhabit it for games at
night, you can't help but follow the religious parallels between God
requesting a cathedral and God instead requesting a baseball diamond in the
middle of nowhere. Baseball here is the religion, and the film takes the
opportunity to draw important comparisons between baseball and real life
philosophical issues that provide for some heartfelt speeches before it's
done. Unlike Costner, composer James Horner has never been a baseball fan.
But when he first saw a cut of
Field of Dreams, he fell in love with
the film and jumped at the assignment despite his lack of knowledge about
the sport. Phil Alden Robinson had original used new age jazz as a temp
score for the film, and the disapproving studio was very supportive of
Horner's hiring because they believed that he would inject the spirit of his
sci-fi/adventure scores into the picture. In fact, Horner defied their
expectations and wrote an arguably minimalistic score dominated by
electronics, piano, and specialty instruments. He then employed an orchestra
for only the final few minutes of music during the finale. While such moves
are made all the time in Hollywood for budgetary reasons, Horner claims to
have approached
Field of Dreams with this intention in mind.
Interestingly, his claims of wanting to write a "magical Americana" score
for
Field of Dreams are contradicted by his finished result... a
score that has a fairly low amount of magic and very little Americana spirit
about it at all. Both
The Natural by Randy Newman and
For the Love
of the Game by Basil Poledouris better capture baseball's historical
place in America's past through orchestral music.
Some Horner fans cling desperately to their now somewhat
rare copies of
Field of Dreams on album, but truth be told, the score
is one giant curiosity. Little consistency is to be heard from start to
finish, with Horner introducing the score with a solo horn leading to a base
whole note... complete with the tingling that mirrors
The Natural.
From there, Horner's solo piano performances lead to the atmosphere of the
simple life on the farm. Without warning, Horner launches into his light
rock "building" theme that occupies two of the cues on the album. These two
cues are ironically closest thing to being the heart of the film's ambition,
and the pan pipe-led performance of the theme in "The Library" is the
highlight of the album. Several brooding cues of heavy electronic base and
meandering key shifts occupy the middle portions of the score, existing as a
mundane cross between lengthy synth motifs of
The Name of the Rose
and the slightly atonal aspects of
Vibes. For "Old Ball Players,"
Horner launches into another completely unrelated music idea: authentic big
band jazz for the era of the ghosts. A light high-tone synth choir fades in
and out over solo pianos in the latter half of the score before the
orchestra finally makes its arrival in "Doc's Memories" and subsequent cues.
The final fifteen minutes of the
Field of Dreams score are perhaps
its most overrated, with Horner accomplishing a far more genuine sense of
broad, string-based Americana in later projects such as
Deep Impact
and
Legends of the Fall. One difficulty with this score is that it
only has one consistent element throughout: a pulsing bass-string (or
bass-synth) effect that's meant to get an "eww... awe..." moment realized
from the audience. An acoustic guitar in "The Place Where Dreams Come True"
could have better tied the entire project together had Horner expanded its
role in the score. Overall,
Field of Dreams just doesn't make much
sense. For a film about ghosts and baseball in Iowa, the electronic approach
is a wasted opportunity because the contrast between the first 3/4's of the
score and the last 15 minutes is not great enough for Horner's desired
dramatic effect. The fact that
Field of Dreams was nominated for an
Academy Award in 1989 (the composer's second feature score nomination)
instead of the far more authentic
Glory is testimony to the Academy's
deeply rooted faults. A highly overrated score.
**
| Bias Check: | For James Horner reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating
is 3.12 (in 89 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.34
(in 158,767 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
"You know, I never was a baseball fan. I still don't know anything about
baseball, but when I saw the movie, I loved it from the moment I saw it.
I wanted to write something very magical for it --yet something uniquely
American-- and it has an Aaron Copland-like sound. This last sequence is
a very long sequence; it's about sixteen minutes long and goes all the
way to the end credits. The director initially had new age jazz on it,
and the studio was horrified, but they were pleased that I was doing it
because I was going to do --like-- a big
Star Trek score on it.
They felt very confident in that direction and I had no intention of
doing that kind of score at all. Most of the score in
Field of
Dreams is electronic; the last two minutes of the score are
orchestral. It was done for dramatic reason where I tied together all the
threads of the film that I had been weaving throughout into the last two
cues. That's really where the story comes together ultimately. I just
thought it was a wonderful film; I wish that those kind of movies came
along more often, but they don't."
--from James Horner's Melbourne (Australia) Seminar in December, 1991.
