Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if the reliable beauty of Mark McKenzie's family-oriented television music creates enough of a relaxing atmosphere to compensate for this score's lack of vigorous engagement. Avoid it... if you expect the score to make any significant attempt to address the Native American elements in the story. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
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. *** Track Listings:
Total Time: 43:08
All artwork and sound clips from The Lost Child are Copyright © 2000, Intrada Records. 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 12/10/00, updated 8/16/08. Review Version 4.1 - PHP (Filmtracks Publications). Copyright © 2000-2013, Christian Clemmensen. All rights reserved. |
