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Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if you listen regularly to The Rock and seek a compilation of the best parts of that score slightly restructured into a more listenable package. Avoid it... if the Hans Zimmer style of powerful masculinity, simple harmonies, and synthetic constructs doesn't fit your notion of a period film score. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
In retrospect, The Man in the Iron Mask is far less satisfying. Golden Age film music collectors identified the problems with the score immediately in 1998, and with the stagnant Zimmer sound bothering some of the younger generation in the following years, scores like this one are simply too repetitive. Its themes are extremely simplistic in their harmonic progressions. The primary theme, heard boldly in "Surrounded" and a few places thereafter, is a simple re-working of the title theme for The Rock, with most of the instrumentation left intact. Casual ears, in fact, will not be able to discern any difference between the opening tracks of the two scores. A secondary theme that dominates "The Ascension" shares significant chord progressions with the "wondrous" theme from The Lion King. A flute theme introduced at the end of "All for One" is almost identical in structure and performance to the similar Irish-styled theme in The Rock. Remaining themes in The Man in the Iron Mask will all raise comparisons to other Zimmer scores, including fragments from Backdraft. Most striking is the use of the electronic bass, guitars, synthetic keyboarding, and trademark deep male chorus in a period film; this instrumentation, while combined well with a traditional ensemble (closer in style to The Lion King's combo sound), will simply not suffice for the 17th Century for some listeners. Glennie-Smith and Wallace contemplated licensing symphonic performances of Handel and Haydn for the handful of cues in the score that simply could not use portions of The Rock, but Glennie-Smith decided in the end to attempt recreations himself. This was an unfortunate move, and his lack of style in his baroque imitations causes three almost laughable cues on album. On the positive side, however, Glennie-Smith did indeed take that powerful and modern Zimmer style of action and package it into one of the most easily digestible forms until Zimmer would do so again himself in King Arthur several years later. If you can turn off your brain and forget the score's constantly derivative nature, it's a surprisingly enjoyable listening experience. It may be dumb, but it accomplishes what Wallace wanted. Over its 50 minutes on album, it will provide a "best of" compilation of ideas from The Rock, with filler material that is sufficient outside of the baroque attempts. ***
The insert contains lengthy notes about the score by Richard Henderson, including the excerpt below:
In rising to the challenge of scoring The Man In The Iron Mask, Nick found himself linking elements of his classical training to the musical vocabulary of modern rock music. "The film is set in 1662," notes Nick, "but it also incorporates some very modern filmic devices. I wanted to have the classical stuff as a backdrop. For instance, there's a ten minute sequence in the film depicting a masked ball, I didn't think that guitars and other modern instruments would be appropriate at all. So I wanted to create a score with a classical foundation that was capable of having modernity wrapped around it at any time. There are occasional guitars, electric basses and synths and percussion that wouldn't have been standard in a Renaissance Court band, but when it came to action sequences, there was no reason the score shouldn't be as modern sounding as you might want it to be. Not that there are car chases - there aren't even carriage chases in the film! It's not swashbuckling all the time - much of the film has a darker emotional tone." | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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