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Holy Smoke!: (Angelo Badalamenti) Spiritual
deprogramming is a fascinating topic sadly under-explored by Hollywood,
and Jane Campion's
Holy Smoke! promised to venture into that
fertile territory. After directing
The Piano and
Portrait of a
Lady, Campion combined her usual feminist theories with religious
cults and brainwashing in her screenplay for
Holy Smoke! The only
problem was that her film was so convoluted that audiences couldn't
figure out if her story was serious or an attempt at satire. Kate
Winslet is an Australian who joins a cult in India, and upon being lured
back home, her family has hired Harvey Keitel (a professional
deprogrammer) to expunge the lies of her guru and return her to her
normal self. The two end up in a halfway house in the middle of the
desert for the three-day program, and all goes to hell when the film
resorts to excessive nudity and sex (well, at least the script goes to
hell). Where the two go from there depends on your tolerance for sappy,
dumb endings. Critics uniformally blasted
Holy Smoke! for not
making its intent clear, its ridiculously absent-minded script failing
to address or resolve any of the film's overarching ideas. Composer
Angelo Badalamenti seemingly approached the film with the same wandering
spirit. He stated that the experience of writing the score for
Holy
Smoke! in less than three days was somewhat of a religious one
between him and Campion, and it really can be heard as such. With
lengthy sequences in the film containing no dialogue and only
Badalamenti score, his role in film's message is integral. Badalamenti's
writing through the years has been as unpredictable as anyone in the
business, ranging from lush and romantic dramas to bizarre and
electronically distorted thrillers. It's nearly impossible to be a fan
of every Badalamenti score, for he alters and replaces his own styles so
frequently. For
Holy Smoke!, Badalamenti applies these radical
shifts to sections within the same score, making for an incongruous, but
ultimately captivating listening experience.
It's a rare day for the film score collector when he or
she actively seeks to skip the orchestral portions of a score in search
of the electronic parts. Badalamenti's orchestral music is established
in the early scenes of character building, and the drama on screen is
only barely accentuated by the music. With a theme that barely
registers, the orchestra is limp and uninspired, perhaps due to small
size, but mostly because of Badalamenti's choice to provide surreal,
minimalistic accompaniment for these scenes. A motif for both whiney and
plucked violins in "Kiss All Around It" introduces the first hint of
sexuality, reprised at the end of "Montage Finale." The electronic
portions of the score allow both the sensual and religious elements to
take flight, however, starting with the simmering keyboarded rhythm in
"Waiting, Reaching, Seeking." A new age song erupts in "The
Celebrations" and is expanded upon in "Maya, Mayi, Ma," a surprisingly
attractive merging of Enya vocal styles with gorgeous flute performances
and Adiemus-like choir and percussion. The ten minutes of this material
on album is so unlike any traditional film score music of the era that
you can't help but admire its cultural crossover intent. For the most
part, these two cues are worth the price of the album. The vaguely East
Indian elements in this and the rest of the score could have been better
accentuated, though, and the sudden appearance of the new age style
exposes Badalamenti's lack of foreshadowing or integration of anything
like these cues in the previous cues. He does pull off one cue of great
humor, though; in "Snappy Lipstick," he records a old time jingle with
honky tonk piano, whistling, and big band woodwinds and percussion
that'll quickly awaken you from the slumber that the surrounding
underscore induced upon you. As for that orchestral underscore,
Badalamenti's varied string cues simply don't hold the enthusiasm,
spiritualism, and journeying spunk of the rest of the album. The three
songs fit well with the film's plot, with the Neil Diamond appropriately
opening the film. Annie Lennox's entry fits well with the surrounding
"Maya, Mayi, Ma'" song by Badalamenti. Overall, it's a really bizarre
score, but it leaves a truly lasting impression, something sadly failing
in most film scores today.
****
The insert notes include an interesting page of experiences from Badalamenti
regarding the conceptualization of the score.
