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The Lost Child: (Mark McKenzie) Hallmark
Entertainment's 206th feature length film for television and video,
The Lost Child starred Academy Award winner Mercedes Ruehl and
premiered on CBS on November 19th, 2000 before working its way onto the
studio's standard video release format. Ruehl is a woman originally
adopted, and upon the death of the Jewish parents who raised her, she
discovers through the Internet that she is in fact a full-blooded Navajo
Native American. The initial shock of discovering her heritage and a
twin sister eventually leads to self-fulfillment as she and her husband
come to accept a new, completely alien family. Composer Mark McKenzie
was no stranger to the Hallmark Hall of Fame series, his frequent
assignments for the studio rivaling those of the prolific Lee Holdridge
in quality. A career orchestrator for several of Hollywood's most
prominent composers during the early years of his career, McKenzie began
to show in the late 1990's the promise of a successful shift to his own
writing. And while these productions (mostly for television) never
yielded the breakthrough to feature motion pictures that many film music
collectors had hoped, McKenzie consistently blessed these relatively
unknown films with lovely orchestral efforts. Fully orchestral and
highly melodic,
The Lost Child is on par with the style that the
composer exhibited for family films both then and in the subsequent
decade. Largely because of Intrada Record's support of McKenzie
throughout his entire career, scores such as
The Lost Child
continue to prove that his compositions for obscure family films are
strong in their thematic development and performance. At the time,
McKenzie had received much praise for his previous Hallmark film score
released on album,
Durango. Unlike that extremely pretty score,
however,
The Lost Child does not contain much of any ethnic
influence whatsoever, despite its subject matter. The choice not to
utilize any significant ethnic instrumentation is perhaps a significant
surprise, for it was the collection of ethnic accents in
Durango
that made that work such a dramatic and enjoyable score. Unfortunately,
the absence of much (if any, really) identifiable ethnic influence in
the score for
The Lost Child causes it to translate into a
generic endeavor.
The lack of a dramatic role for Native American
instrumentation doesn't necessarily diminish the quality of McKenzie's
work here, however. As always, the composer begins with a set of lovely
themes and interpolates them constantly throughout the rest of the
score. The string section is dominant, performing the majority of large
thematic statements and existing as a constant underlying presence. Also
along the typical McKenzie approach is the use of woodwinds, acoustic
guitar, harp, and piano to elaborate on the themes during conversational
and reflective moments in the story. As these solo performances weave in
and out of each other, the score maintains a consistently amicable and
pleasant tone from beginning to end. The actual constructs of the themes
are extremely pleasant, but they make little attempt to distinguish
themselves from each other. One of them is reminiscent of James Horner's
career while another uses progressions similar to the elegant title
theme for McKenzie's own
Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde. All of the
flowing performances of easy harmony tend to blend together in the end,
producing the right atmosphere for the film even if individual themes
don't stay in memory very long. The Intrada album is almost the same
length as that of
Durango, though without any truly strong
pronouncements of theme, it passes by far more anonymously. The
Northwest Sinfonia performs this time, and the group seems less vibrant
than the City of Prague Philharmonic, with whom McKenzie recorded
previously. Part of that difference in dynamic attitude might be due to
the more contemplative and introverted nature of
The Lost Child.
McKenzie's most impressive scores are those in which he allows his
strings to mingle with an active brass section, and
The Lost
Child has no significant brass performances whatsoever (outside of
the sparse mix in "The Horse"). Had the piano, guitar, and harp played
their lines simultaneously in additional cues, perhaps the album would
be a more memorable listening experience. As it stands, it offers a
restrained version of the McKenzie style that collectors have enjoyed so
much on his previous and forthcoming albums. This particular release by
Intrada was reportedly not distributed to all of the usual online
outlets, so the label's own website was the best option for purchase.
Overall,
The Lost Child is reliably melodic and contains not a
single cue of worry, but don't expect it to vigorously engage you.
*** Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download
| Bias Check: | For Mark McKenzie reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating
is 3.78 (in 9 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.45
(in 3,022 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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