Buy it... only if you're prepared for an appropriately mind-numbing and subdued, but effectively dramatic string and piano-dominated score of introversion.

Avoid it... if you require your melodramatic love and war story film scores to exhibit an outwardly engaging and convincingly emotional personality.

Eidelman

Harrison's Flowers: (Cliff Eidelman) Few motion pictures can truly capture the most brutal aspects of war, and while Harrison's Flowers has a few structural problems within its narrative, it certainly paints an appropriately grim picture of the war between the Serbs and Croats in the early 1990's. The story of Elie Chouraqui's film involves the emotional and psychological perils about the reporting of war around the world (and how it can affect those close to journalists when they go missing in war torn areas). In this case, the wife of a journalist, a photographer herself, decides to pursue her missing husband into the former Yugoslavia, not only drawing a sense of conclusion about her marriage but also witnessing some of the worst that human behavior has to offer. The somber subject matter is eventually overshadowed by the fact that it is also a romantic love story, albeit set in horrific circumstances. A French film that debuted in Europe more than a year before its opening in America, Harrison's Flowers suffered from the circumstances of studio legalities and Universal Focus was forced to replace the film's original score written by Bruno Coulais. Chosen to rescore the film was Cliff Eidelman, whose job was to capture both the devastating setting of war while also reflecting a sense of hope that endures in the love story. After a few years of sustaining a career on smaller compositional and conducting assignments, Eidelman had been attempting to work his way back into the mainstream of film scoring in the early 2000's. The previous year's An American Rhapsody marked his first feature film score after two years, and 2002's Harrison's Flowers was his first large scale project in roughly five years. Instead of heading to the extremes of either war or passion, Eidelman chose to tackle the task by providing a steady and consistent score on safe middle ground. The sequences of war are not treated with overbearing music; they contain neither fright nor force to conflict with the low key drama of Eidelman's overarching tone. Even the worst of the war's projection on screen is represented by a mellow and subdued meandering of strings and electronic vocals. Both "The Bosnian War" and "Real War" tackle the environment with somber restraint. There's really little that the music does to accentuate the horrors of war above and beyond its contribution to a mind-numbing haze of bleak contemplation. Eidelman uses extremely heavy bass strings and no memorable thematic material to build to false crescendos during the war cues, and this is the extent of the strikingly melodramatic music for Harrison's Flowers.

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No doubt, the music's functionality in the film is closely tied to an introverted and internalized struggle by the woman who goes searching for her lost husband. If there is terror involved, then it is in the mind, and not an overt expression or physical explosion. The score was clearly meant to extend the dramatic element of that struggle rather than the extremes of emotion that are often associated with war. Either way, the score for Harrison's Flowers is anonymous enough that it could very well work for a small town drama in the heartland of America. No ethnic elements that would be associated with a film about distant war are even attempted. The romantic moments addressing the love that exists between the journalist and his wife are scored with the piano as a central identity, which is no surprise for Eidelman collectors. The theme representing them is subtle and gentle, often barely recognizable in its slight construction. In the middle portions of the score, this piano work is sparsely rendered. The finale cues (represented by the final two tracks on the album) offer the most significant development of the title theme for the two characters, even crossing over into the strings that dominate the rest of the score. But in the case of establishing a strong romance between these two characters, the score fails to summon enough strength of heart to really convey any such caring. In fact, the entire score for Harrison's Flowers lacks power, depth, and emotional enticement. It is pleasant in a relaxing and aimless fashion, with the scenes of war handled in a remarkably similar fashion to the scenes of the two main characters together. The work has no real beginning, no real climax, and no real conclusion. Part of that lack of identity may be due to the small production values of the recording. The ensemble consists primarily of strings, the piano, and an occasional electronic sampling. It is a very restrained score about a significantly more troubling subject matter than the music would indicate, and although the circumstances about why such an under-dramatic score was provided for film are unknown, it may suffice in context nevertheless. On album, Harrison's Flowers is a work of the same subdued level as One True Thing and An American Rhapsody, though without the same attractive tone of easy harmony in parts. Ultimately, this is a pleasant, though sometimes uninteresting listening experience on album, and only devoted collectors of the composer will be interested in its consistently depressing mood. The score by Coulais, incidentally, isn't particularly memorable either, making Harrison's Flowers an underachiever in the music category no matter the country of release. ***   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For Cliff Eidelman reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.29 (in 17 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.2 (in 7,740 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.