Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... only if you explicitly appreciated the score's robust choral sequences in the film itself. Avoid it... if you expect a film of this genre and magnitude to feature a passionate and involving score that consistently addresses the religious and historical significance of the tale. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc: (Eric Serra) Among the plethora of films made about the French legend of Saint Joan, Luc Besson's major 1999 production stands as one of the most technically impressive. With an international supporting cast and production values on par with a blockbuster film, The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc was Besson's attempt to break into Oscar territory. Unfortunately, several fatal flaws with the picture burned its chances of success and, as a side note, the film marked the end of the marriage between Besson and lead actress Milla Jovovich. The role of Joan proved too complicated for the perennial tough girl, and her lackluster performance combined with poor plot pacing, questionable interpretations of history, uninteresting battle sequences, and a truly troublesome score by Eric Serra caused The Messenger to ultimately fail. Serra's work on the production remains a curiosity to this day. Although he attempted to assemble a massive group of capable orchestral and choral performers for the score, leading them in music meant to have the scope of any historical epic, the end result is muddled and aimless. While in a technical sense it's easiest to point to the total lack of consistency when trying to pinpoint exactly why this score doesn't click, there remains the intriguing possibility that Serra was simply out of his league for this production. Being limited mostly to the pop and rock genres, Serra's talents with an orchestra were far less than a host of others even in the French film scoring scene. As such, it's not surprising that Serra managed to collect all of the base elements that an epic "knights in armor" genre score requires (heavy, melodramatic strings, large choral sequences, clanging chimes, etc.), but in the execution of the score, he lost sight of that genre. Resorting far too often to performing himself on percussion and keyboards, he even inserted sampled effects completely incongruous with the era. In many places, it's functional music, but it is neither intelligent nor enjoyable. Its noteworthy cues of orchestral and choral exploration are often separated by long moments of nothingness, yielding an equally frustrating album. The music you hear in The Messenger is what you get when you strip all the passion out of a concept like Basil Poledouris' Les Misérables and perform it with the same lack of engagement or enthusiasm that restrained Gabriel Yared's The English Patient. Serra's action sequences fall into two categories: those that are heavily reliant on traditional material (which is credited in general by Serra) and original, pounding simplicity that is what you get if you take Jerry Goldsmith's First Knight and strip it of any sense of heroism, style, or hefty, historical importance. For a film about conquest, desire, religion, and anger, Serra's music for The Messenger has very little drive or intensity. It murmurs, it clangs, it rumbles, and it trickles, but never does it unleash the epic scope of importance or the character development that lies at the heart of the story. So much of the score ditches the orchestra in favor of bland electronics that significant lengths are barely audible and, unfortunately, incredibly boring. Serra opens the score with his troubled and introverted title theme in "Talk to Him," a theme that reportedly strongly resembles the 1918 opera Gianni Schicchi by Giacomo Puccini, and uses it in five or six key cues throughout the work (as well as part of the pop song at the end). It is difficult to obtain any satisfaction from this theme because of its poorly orchestrated renderings. It exists at an odd balance between harmonic structure and dissonant shades, leaving little to be excited about during the opening cue on album or the dozen cues to follow. During this large section of the album, Serra programs his synthesizers to produce quiet, electronic grinding and pounding sounds, often with very little accompaniment by the orchestra, and with pacing that couldn't compete with a snail, you'll be desperate for the more explosive crescendos in the product's latter half to save the listening experience. There are times when Serra's softer cues are downright obnoxious, not in volume, but because he isn't afraid to take samples of backwards recordings better left for contemporary settings and mix them into this score's forefront. Conversely, The Messenger does offer a few momentous performances by a full, adult chorus in harmony with the orchestra. The slow crescendo in "Rex Coronatur" is perhaps the highlight of the album, with a beautiful variation on the title theme during its conclusion. Four pivotal cues later in the score, however, are not completely original. For the heaviest lifting, Serra seems to have done what Hans Zimmer would do the following year with Gladiator, taking pieces of Strauss, Wagner, Orff, among others, and at times quoting them almost verbatim. In particular, the finale of "Angelus In Medio Ignis" is a tiresome, slight altering of Carmina Burana. It makes you wonder why Serra and Besson didn't just license the actual piece. The original action sequences are unenthusiastic and thematically uninspiring. The climax of the middle section of the album is represented by "The Tourelles," which features a blend of non-descript, symphonic and electronic hits pounding over and over and over again, with little interesting variance. The tone of this cue is close to the awkward balance of similar mixes in The Fifth Element. These action cues are big, but far from epic. Whether dealing with a traditional battle sequence or a religious source-like situation, The Messenger is lackadaisical about its own subject matter. The electronics detract from the whole with a constantly distant pounding or droning to be heard in almost any cue. These overlays cannot be a substitute for intelligent orchestrations, and overall, they are a primary reason why the album will be a major disappointment for many. That album hits rock bottom with the pop song at the end. Co-written by Serra, "My Heart Calling" proves that Serra's title theme for the film is so poor a melody that it doesn't translate to lyrics very well (and the voice-overs in its latter half are downright annoying). This entire product underwhelms. The previous Besson/Jovovich/Serra collaboration, The Fifth Element, thrived on its creativity, cultural innovation, and a remarkable knack for capturing the spirit of the film's genre. Unfortunately, Serra's music for The Messenger, even with its grand size and choral adaptations, lacks any consistency, and, perhaps most importantly, a heart and soul. ** Track Listings:
Total Time: 64:11
All artwork and sound clips from The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc are Copyright © 1999, Sony Classical. 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 11/8/99, updated 5/18/08. Review Version 4.1 - PHP (Filmtracks Publications). Copyright © 1999-2013, Christian Clemmensen. All rights reserved. |
