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Legends of the Fall: (James Horner) The 1994 film
Legends of the Fall is for the big screen what romance novels are
for old ladies. It is limitless, brute romanticism against the painted
skies of Montana, primordial in its appeal and doomed by those who are
not swayed by tear-jerking character dramas. If anyone doubted that
director Ed Zwick was trying to yank at the emotional chains of
audiences with his 1989 stunner
Glory, then
Legends of the
Fall is proof that you can succeed at it not just once, but twice.
Heroic and tragic, honorable and sorrowful,
Legends of the Fall
combines the most potent elements of a British period production with
the vast expanses of Big Sky Country. Its cast was remarkably strong,
led by a headstrong and painfully humorous performance by Anthony
Hopkins as the father of three adult sons split by ideals, ambitions,
and one woman. As he had accomplished for
Glory, composer James
Horner matched Zwick's engrossing melodrama with an unashamed powerhouse
of a score, and while the music for
Legends of the Fall doesn't
quite equal the ethereal qualities of
Glory, it comes damn close.
The early 1990's were a time of few hits and numerous misses for Horner,
scrounging around in the trash bin of video-quality animated films and
failed light dramas. With
Legends of the Fall came a sudden and
overwhelming resurgence that would launch the composer into a year of
incredible success in 1995, led by
Apollo 13 and
Braveheart. These three scores together would yield two Golden
Globe nominations and two Academy Awards nominations, and yet none would
win either award. Still, these three scores together (and you can even
throw in the decent
Casper and
Balto in the middle of the
timeline) represent one of the greatest periods of production that any
composer has ever enjoyed. As the first in line,
Legends of the
Fall caught listeners by surprise with its sheer weight of
performance and rich variety of themes.
Horner has reveled in his fair share of dramatically
thematic scores, but never before or since
Legends of the Fall
did he accomplish the same level of gravity... not even with
Titanic. He composes several major themes for the film, almost
all given significant development and repeated statements, and each
resounding with the majesty of the landscape. It's a score that may have
Richard Wagner in a distant corner of the conscience, but rather than
relying on the plethora of classical influences that plague many of his
other scores, the most direct connection this score draws from,
surprisingly for Horner and unsurprisingly for the genre, is John
Barry's
Dances With Wolves. The straight forward, simplistic
romanticism of Barry's trademark sound for major dramas in the 80's and
90's seems to be the template on which Horner builds
Legends of the
Fall. The pacing is slower, the counterpoint is held to a minimum,
and the players of the orchestra burst forth with magnificent string
performances aided, as with Barry's work, by supplemental horns. And
it's the strength of the themes in
Legends of the Fall that leads
to its success. The meaning behind Horner's several ideas for the film
overlap in conceptual use on screen, so the following labels for the
purpose of this review could be up for debate. The title theme,
introduced in the latter half of "Legends of the Fall" is the broad
representation of the story's overarching mores and location. It
accompanies the beauty of the land and is the soul of the score. It
isn't heard perhaps as much as the second major theme of the score, but
it definitely bookends the proceeds with a lovely and extremely
deliberate performance at the very end of the film. That secondary theme
is the one that ties the Ludlow family together, used most frequently by
Horner as the story constantly reminds the viewer of the bond that
culminates in bitter vengeance and sweet victory at its conclusion. This
theme receives the same string-dominated weight as the primary theme for
the landscape, and the two interact in a few places. Softer variations
of the theme for piano and fiddle are a melancholy representation of
Hopkins' austere character.
The themes for each of the three brothers aren't quite
as distinct, typically overwhelmed to some degree by the Ludlow theme. A
short-lived, somber variant for the youngest brother, Samuel, is
primarily stated twice after his death. The restrained and refined theme
for Alfred is logically overtaken in "Alfred Moves to Montana" by the
Ludlow theme. The representation for Tristan, the Brad Pitt character
that mostly weaves the story together, is perhaps the most impressive of
all. Its use in "The Changing Seasons/Wild Horses/Tristan's Return" and
"Alfred, Tristan, The Colonel, The Legend..." is equally powerful. The
first cue features the theme over a bed of percussion as robust as
Trevor Jones'
Last of the Mohicans and the latter cue offers the
theme with a very haunting shakuhachi accompaniment at about six minutes
into the cue. The themes for the three boys would be pieced together
with a beautifully somber tone in "Goodbyes," a cue that offers some of
the more personal string layers of
Glory. Other motifs meander
throughout
Legends of the Fall, including one that makes strong
use of the shakuhachi in several cues. Horner used the Japanese wood
flute with interesting success in
Thunderheart a couple of years
prior, and he extends the same spirit to
Legends of the Fall. As
before, an ethnically propulsive, throaty rhythm is used to accentuate
the very basic emotions of the story, including suspense, fear, and
death. The score opens with a few bursts of rhythm that anyone might
confuse as coming from
Thunderheart. For two of the score's most
prominent cues (as heard in the film), this rhythm incorporates more of
the streamlined pacing and auxiliary instrumentation of
Patriot
Games, a score that also relied heavily on these sounds. At the end
of "Revenge" and especially in the pivotal start of "Alfred, Tristan,
The Colonel, The Legend...," Horner adds synthesizer and solo female
vocal effects that stand well apart from the rest of the score. Given
how consistently heavy the ensemble performances of theme are in
Legends of the Fall, these rhythmic cues are a welcome
diversion.
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One of the strengths of
Legends of the Fall is
the fact that every moment of thematic development is conveyed with the
same heavy heart. The orchestration work of Thomas Pasatieri and Don
Davis presents the London Symphony Orchestra in a form that eclipses
even the Americana spirit of
Dances With Wolves. One of
Legends of the Fall's more poignant moments is in the second
minute of "Off to War," which rumbles with soft timpani that very much
resembles Barry's famous score, especially with the weighty ensemble
performance of the title theme that results from its slowly building
construct. When you step back and admire the awe and magnificence that
Legends of the Fall creates, you realize that the score not only
unfolds in convenient concert-like cues on album, but is a nearly
perfect match for the film. Horner's technique for the final
confrontation scene works wonders; while the story on screen shifts
between multiple positions with elegance, Horner's strong progression
doesn't attempt to jump along with it. The continuity that his music
provides the film, not only in this remarkable scene of suspense, but
also in the larger, flowing themes, is one of its best assets. Another
important point to consider with
Legends of the Fall is that
despite the connections to the shakuhachi rhythms in the aforementioned
previous score, this work is relatively unique in Horner's career. There
are interludes for tinkling percussion and piano that would foreshadow
The Spitfire Grill and the opening of "Samuel's Death" would
mirror the frantic action of the "Master Alarm" cue in
Apollo 13.
A later, more harmonious line of action in the same cue would resemble
the finale of
Balto. But these similarities are not as obnoxious
as they tend to be in many of Horner's other large-scale scores. The
album for
Legends of the Fall continues its strangely "cult"
status more than a dozen years after its release, branching out well
beyond the normal Horner collector base in its appeal. An isolated DVD
score track has added more material to the bootleg market, but the
75-minute commercial album provides more than enough magnificent
material for all film score collectors to sink their teeth into.
***** Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download
| Bias Check: | For James Horner reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating
is 3.13 (in 98 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.25
(in 184,725 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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