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The Kite Runner: (Alberto Iglesias) Director Marc
Forster and screenwriter David Benioff have been extremely faithful in
their adaptation of the best-selling Khaled Hosseini novel
The Kite
Runner, and their reward has been a significant showing in early
awards consideration. The film has been a great arthouse success,
breaking hearts with its emotionally stark but frightfully realistic
glimpse at the culture of Afghanistan from the times before the Russian
invasion through the rule of the Taliban. Two boyhood friends share a
love of kite flying, but their class differences cause one to betray the
other in such a dramatic fashion that the story closely follows his
life-long path to redemption. A move to America underlines the clash of
societies living in different centuries, but the common thread of the
film is one of an introspective personal journey that has no clear
heroes and villains. The assignment to
The Kite Runner seems like
a perfect fit for Spanish composer Alberto Iglesias, who is not only
adept at composing in dramatic cross-cultural fashion, but is also an
international favorite with arthouse audiences. His collaboration with
director Pedro Almodóvar was his introduction to most of those
listeners, with several Goya Awards and nominations for Golden Globes
and Academy Awards resulting in this decade. His knack for combining the
styles of multiple cultural genres of music into one package has become
his specialty, ranging in success from the cross between classical
chamber music and Latin flavor in
Talk to Her to the less
tangible merging of a Western orchestra and the highly textured, worldly
instruments of East Africa in
The Constant Gardener. The most
common result of his endeavors is an authenticity for each location he
writes for despite incorporating seemingly incongruous elements from
unrelated genres. Iglesias continues the same techniques in
The Kite
Runner, augmenting the standard studio orchestra in Los Angeles with
a variety of specialty instruments and vocals that take small pieces of
Western symphonic sensibilities and infuse them with a surprisingly
effective balance between traditional Middle Eastern tones and a
smoother, more rhythmic Latin foundation.
While Iglesias does make an effort to provide thematic
representation for the characters and the film as a whole,
The Kite
Runner isn't going to leave any lasting motif in your mind. A title
theme of sorts is exhibited in its boldest form on strings in the middle
of "Opening Titles," and the betrayed boy receives a solitary thematic
performance in "Hassan Theme." But these themes are extremely subtle and
complex in their progressions, typically forcing them to meander in
relative obscurity amongst Iglesias' far more compelling rhythmic
movements. The score alternates between somewhat cerebral explorations
of tones from the specialty instruments and the wildly frenetic and
occasionally quite positive rhythmic explosions. The highlight of the
score is easily "Kite Tournament," a cue that stutters and stops between
extremely attractive rhythms performed by strings and percussion, with
clarinet interludes underscoring the sensitivity of the event. It's not
hard to imagine that this cue alone propelled this score into awards
contention. Other cues maximize the use of rhythmic devices, from the
pleasant tones of an acoustic guitar to the horrific piano pounding in
"Escape," but the remainder of
The Kite Runner is an intelligent
presentation of specialty performances that preserve the score's
identity through their mere presence. Vocal performances true to the
region are stellar in both "The Call, Kabul 1978," and especially "End
Phone Call." Only Mychael Danna has approached the same level of
authenticity in instrumental use; the oud, duduk, and ney are all
familiar elements to the region, joining a half dozen other specialty
instruments that impress due to the care with which they provide their
contributions. A masterful mix of the score emphasizes these elements
extremely well. The latter half of the album release contains some of
the less interesting cues, with the tension of "Fuel Tanker" and "The
Stadium" resorting to primordial appeals through less complicated
dissonance. The album features five source songs, two of which suffering
from archival sound given their 1975 recordings, though the modern
"Omaid e Man" vocal performance fits beautifully with the style of
Iglesias' score. Overall, among the composer's better known works,
The Kite Runner isn't as consistent as
Talk to Her, but
has far more highlights than the much-hyped
The Constant
Gardener. It's fascinating throughout, but only a few sequences
beckon for repeated enjoyment.
***
The insert includes a short note from the director about the score.
