Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if you love the great adventure scores of John Williams and David Arnold in the 1980's and 1990's and seek an intelligent, challenging extension of that sound for a large-scale Danish fantasy production. Avoid it... if fantasy/horror scores featuring unrelentingly powerful and monumental orchestral and choral performances are simply too overwhelming for your tastes. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
Island of Lost Souls (De Fortabte Sjæles Ø): (Jane Antonia Cornish) The second film from director and writer Nikolaj Arcel, Island of Lost Souls is reportedly the largest children's fantasy film ever to come from Denmark. The Danish-language adventure was built as a tribute to the classic 1980's movies of Steven Spielberg, intentionally infusing American blockbuster magic from yesteryear into a story inherently strong on Danish sensibilities. The story involves a group of diverse youngsters in a coastal Danish town who attempt to save one of their own when he is accidentally possessed by the spirit of a Wiccan from a hundred years prior who is engaged in an ongoing battle with a powerful, dark magician who happens to be a soul-corrupting necromancer. Now the kids, led by the possessed boy's sister (a Wiccan herself), join the battle to save him and, possibly, the whole world. Dark forests and mystical concepts meet modern technology and the kid next door, thrusting Island of Lost Souls into competition with Harry Potter and the flurry of other related fantasy films pouring out of Hollywood in the 2000's. The movie features a stunning 623 special effects shots and, in Arcel's spirit of raising the good old American adventure films of the 80's from the dead, a sweeping and massive orchestral score. On board the production came British composer Jane Antonia Cornish, a talented musician who wrote her first symphony at the age of 12 and chose to explore composition for film while in college. With a few independent films and commercials to her name after graduation, she re-located to Los Angeles, where her career as an orchestrator included work on a handful of notable scores. Her score for Five Children and It in 2005 won a BAFTA award, though the lack of an album release failed to gain her much attention for the score in America. For Island of Lost Souls, she would travel to Denmark and record with the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, and the enthusiasm with which she approached the project is easily evident in the quality of the score and its recording. For film score collectors, a group consisting predominantly of males with musical tastes outside of mainstream, it would be easy to imagine widespread surprise that a score of this magnificent scope of fantasy and horror could come from a woman with such a striking appearance as Cornish, though with the work of fellow female British composers Debbie Wiseman and, to a lesser extent, Rachel Portman, in the genre, such surprises are becoming fewer. Scores like Island of Lost Souls and Wiseman's Arsène Lupin are entertaining both because of their outstanding technical merits and because, frankly, the perception of the film scoring community as a male-only club needs to be put to rest. Portman may not have done her gender many favors in these regards with her fluffy romantic writing for her most famous works, but the next wave of composers following her is proving their talents in far more diverse genres. All gender discussion aside, though, Island of Lost Souls is a remarkable score no matter its creator, and with the work receiving a commercial release from Milan's European branch, perhaps Cornish will receive the attention merited to her for both this and Five Children and It. Like that previous effort, Island of Lost Souls was inspired in part by John Williams. As the director stated in early 2007, "She really hit the right note in Island of Lost Souls. That's an enormous boon to the film. It's practically Wagnerian. The film has 70 minutes of symphonic, bombastic music." Many reviewers of the film seem to have made the Williams comparisons, too, though the styles that Cornish draws from also define the careers of other major composers working today. While there are intangible connections to the structures of Williams' scores for the two original Star Wars sequels, there are also similarities in thematic progression and orchestration to the works of David Arnold, John Ottman, and Elliot Goldenthal. Unlike some contemporary film scores, during which the connections to previous works by others can become tiresome, such similarities in Island of Lost Souls are purely positive. Cornish's composition is a challenging and intelligent extension of the genre during each of its cues. The bold title theme for Island of Lost Souls may be both rather simplistic in structure and reminiscent of other blockbuster works, but the style with which it is rendered to page and performed by the enthusiastic Danish ensemble gives it, and Cornish by association, a sound all its own. It's the kind of gritty, brassy theme that is memorable enough to support a franchise; its progressions remind strongly of Ottman's title theme for his Fantastic Four scores, but the performance of the material for Island of Lost Souls is executed with such bravado that it approaches the territory of David Arnold's early blockbusters. The use of the full sonic spectrum is the closest resemblance to Arnold's frenetic action writing, with Island of Lost Souls constantly stretching the limits of the bass and treble with deep, resonating strings and brass at the bottom while wildly flourishing woodwind lines occupy the opposite end. The complexity of the balance between harmony and dissonant textures is a reminder of Goldenthal's more impressive works. The use of the choir is unique to this score, however, ranging from religiously terrifying, throaty male performances and alluring, other-worldly performances by a meandering female voice (as heard best in "The Cave"). The full ensemble choral accompaniment to several of the ambitious action bursts is not to be missed. A secondary character theme is introduced for solo woodwind in "Death of Linea" and touch upon again in "Lulu's Theme" and in fragments thereafter. During these slower portions of the score, which are quite few on album, the intelligent roles of the harp and other more delicate instruments are exposed. Most of the score is reserved for the massive action cues, with "Final Battle" and "Soul Bridge" serving as an outstanding survey of the score. The opening fanfare in "Island of Lost Souls" is one of the most robust introductions to a theme in quite some time, and the "End Titles" are a very satisfying summary of all the ideas. The Milan album features only about half of the score, preceded by an odd assortment of pop songs that score fans will want to skip over. But the 40 minutes of extremely well recorded orchestral material, with a sound quality as clearly resonating as any in recent years, will impress any fan who shares the love of 80's fantasy scores that Cornish has emulated with great success. ***** Track Listings:
Total Time: 53:03
All artwork and sound clips from Island of Lost Souls are Copyright © 2008, Milan Records (France). The reviews and notes contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Filmtracks Publications. Audio clips can be heard using RealPlayer but cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 2/9/08, updated 2/10/08. Review Version 4.1 - PHP (Filmtracks Publications). Copyright © 2008-2013, Christian Clemmensen. All rights reserved. |
