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The Interpreter: (James Newton Howard) If there is any
one genre of film which consistently provides for a better viewing on screen
than a listening on album, it's the modern political thriller. It's been a
while since respected director Sydney Pollack dove into this genre, but with
his similar films of fine quality extending all the way back to
Three
Days of the Condor, there's always much promise in these ventures. The
setting of
The Interpreter exists at the United Nations in New York
and involves a fictional country based on real-life dictators and political
environments in the African nation of Zimbabwe. A U.N. interpreter from that
nation overhears a plot to assassinate its leader, and plunges her (and the
American secret service agents who help her) into a potentially explosive
international event. With a tale of quality and the characters (i.e. acting
talent) to back it up,
The Interpreter has been hailed as a project
at par (if not above) with Pollack's established quality of operation. A
difficult element to judge in these films, however, is the respective score
for each thrilling film, because the music for films like
The
Interpreter is often more atmospheric by demand rather than something
larger than the film itself. Not a surprise at all is the fact that composer
James Newton Howard landed on this project, for he is well versed in the two
major necessities for
The Interpreter; first, the occasional tendency
of this music to reside in mostly dark corners of the film is something
Howard has exhibited before, and secondly, Howard has also proven his
ability in providing the ethnic flair that a score for
The
Interpreter could well use to its benefit. Howard accomplishes this
ethnicity through African vocals and a wide range of percussion from half a
dozen percussionists alone. While the African influence on the score for
The Interpreter never explodes with the same outward expression as
any score with Lebo M. performances, per se, Howard does impress by
providing any such ethnicity at all; it's a move that saves his score from
total obscurity and could very easily have been neglected (to the detriment
of the film).
Employing a decently sized Hollywood Studio Symphony,
Howard doesn't aim to capture attention with either thematic or other
motif-based structure. In fact, the presence of African drum rhythms, often
combined with synthetic sounds of metal tingling, rambles throughout the
score at various levels of intensity and provides the only really necessary,
minimal continuity between the parts. Despite the size of the orchestral
ensemble, Howard does not allow the ethnic rhythms to combine with the full
force of the orchestra until the highlight cue, "Zuwanie Arrival at U.N.,"
for which Howard provides a crescendo of harmonic chord progressions at
thrilling heights and pounding rhythms as we witness the targeted African
leader weave through New York in a motorcade. It's interesting to note that
Howard pulled the same crescendo of gusto for
Devil's Advocate in a
similarly heightened New York street scene. At other times in the score,
Howard's use of the African percussion for the purposes of suspense are of
interest; in "Silvia Showers," your spine will tingle as if an African
animal hunt were in progress. At other times, however, as in the prolonged
opening cue, Howard's textures are too minimally constructed with ambient
sound design to really appreciate alone. Several such cues follow,
unfortunately allowing some instrumental development for characters to
become washed away in the lull. Slight motifs for piano and clarinet haunt
the primary characters as they investigate and are investigated, though none
of these moments will grab your attention. Distant African vocals do spice
up a few of these cues; the "Simon's Journals" cue offers a pleasant
harmonic combination of the vocals and ensemble. Howard adapts the
traditional African hymn "Atolago" into several cues, and it is, not
surprisingly, the most memorable thematic element in the score. With a
respectful debut in "Drowning Man Trail," the theme is part of Howard's end
credits, a cue that beautifully summarizes all of the score's ideas with the
vocals, strings, guitar, and piano. Slight hints of
The Sixth Sense
float in the piano performances. Like
The Fugitive, the end title cue
is a thematic culmination that finally conveys a satisfying sense of
resolution, but along the same lines, some could easily argue that
The
Interpreter is also like
The Fugitive in that it could still have
been a better structured score for a superior film. Overall, Howard's
The
Interpreter does spend significant time languishing the unexciting
depths of sound design and untethered solo instrumentals, but the "Zuwanie
Arrival at U.N." and "End Credits" cues, along with several short bursts of
percussion and satisfying vocal haunts throughout, will be a delight for any
fan of political thrillers.
***
| Bias Check: | For James Newton Howard reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating
is 3.34 (in 34 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.39
(in 46,122 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert includes a list of performers, but no extra information about the score or film.
