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House of Cards: (James Horner) Faring poorly at the
conclusion of its production process was Michael Lessac's sole
directorial effort for the big screen,
House of Cards. After
gathering dust for two years due to the lack of a distributor, the movie
was picked up for an obscure release in 1993 and only earned $300,000 in
grosses. Kathleen Turner and Tommy Lee Jones work to unlock the psyche
of a young girl emotionally scarred by the death of her father while he
was studying Mayan temples in Mexico. The girl gets caught up in the
mysticism of that region and can only communicate through stacks of
cards and other bizarre means. She is finally saved when her mother
(Turner) discovers a way to defy the supposedly professional avenues of
help (represented by Jones) and bring the damaged family back together.
It was a redeeming topic with a decent cast that probably was better
suited for a television release. That did not stop composer James Horner
from pouring a fair amount of emotional depth into the score for
House of Cards despite a relatively limited budget. It has been
noted throughout Horner's career that he has a certain gift for
capturing the imagination of children and young adults, with scores from
Something Wicked This Way Comes to
Boy in the Striped
Pajamas exuding a wondrous atmosphere of a child's inner world while
also addressing the darkness that invades that reality from the
circumstances of real life events. In conveying the same general spirit
of airy intimacy,
House of Cards is frankly quite reminiscent of
Horner's other works of similar demeanor and stature. Of course, the
composer's own habit of regurgitating the same structures and
orchestrations exaggerates this effect, but for the learned Horner
collector, this score will be an undemanding and basically rewarding
listening experience. There is absolutely nothing in
House of
Cards that is unique to this score, which is quite a statement given
that it spans an interesting range of Horner's techniques from the
period, but it exhibits a wholesome sense of wonder and goodness that is
effective nevertheless. The composer does emphasize woodwinds more than
usual here, using his regular specialty collaborators to provide
well-mixed performances of pan flutes and traditional flutes to
represent the girl's innocence. That tone is augmented by the strings,
harp, percussion, and piano of the orchestra and electronic keyboarding
to address the Mayan mysticism in ways not unfamiliar to
Vibes
and
Where the River Runs Black.
Horner has always had the ability to tickle the senses
with flowing, seemingly detached woodwind performances that are as
beautiful as they are elusive.
House of Cards employs the flutes
in ways identical to the forest environments of
The Spitfire
Grill and
The New World. The motifs shared between these
scores are remarkably similar but no less enticing, especially with the
adaptation of the flute's role into the rhythmic portions of
House of
Cards. The girl in the story is essentially afforded three themes,
the last of which actually providing the most impact on the score. Heard
in "House of Cards" and the two "Virtual Reality" cues, Horner
introduces swirling percussion akin to his 1980's fantasy music of a
lighter touch, allowing the fluttering piano, triangles, tapped cymbals,
blurting secondary flutes, and other precise instruments to form a
Philip Glass-like bed of fluid movement while the girl's imagination is
represented by the omnipresent flute motif. Naturally, a darker version
of this idea exists in "The Roof" and "Near Accident." A lovely reunion
theme for the girl and her mother is perhaps technically the primary
idea for the film, a lullaby heard briefly in "Arriving Home" and
returning when her mind is freed in "Reunion in Time." This identity,
vaguely connected to
Cocoon in progression, buoyantly opens
"Closing Credits" with all the sincere innocence of Horner's plethora of
children's themes of the era. A third theme, rooted in the Mayan
location, starkly opens the score in "Opening Credits - The
Processional," lingers with troublesome effect in "Distant Memories,"
and returns in full in "Reunion in Time." This material is the score's
least interesting, applying pan flutes and droning electronic beats and
tones in ways that plagued several other Horner scores. In general, the
redemptive passages in
House of Cards will remind of
The
Rocketeer and the ominously suspenseful portions will, strangely
enough, recall Christopher Young's mysterious parts of
Hellraiser
II in the majority of "The Dream." On the whole, Horner's work for
House of Cards is extremely well presented in terms of a
narrative flow, and the three cues of rhythmic activity surrounding the
imagination theme are definitely recommended for any Horner. The same
could be said about the conservatively pretty "Closing Credits."
Otherwise, the score is a bit mundane despite its impressive quotient of
magic. The only album of the score was released in the form of 1,500
copies by Intrada Records in 2009, selling out almost immediately. It's
a well presented album of attractive music, but it doesn't merit
extraordinary resale prices.
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The insert includes basic information about the score and film.
