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Minority Report: (John Williams) After the crushing
critical failure of
A.I. Artificial Intelligence the previous
year, director Steven Spielberg turned his sights on another futuristic
story about humanity, but this time rooted in the film noir genre of old
time detective thrillers. Not long into the future, a gifted handful of
people can predict when crime is about to happen, allowing police to
foil the event before it happens. The plot of
Minority Report
questions what would happen if one of the lead investigators is himself
predicted of committing murder, sending him on a chase that may
inevitably cause the murder in the first place. It's a circular
examination of fate, destiny, and free will that makes the audience
think as much as it had with
A.I., but without the horrendous
emotional baggage. For Spielberg, the positive response to
Minority
Report, despite the film's failure to achieve classic status, helped
solve some of the ills caused by
A.I., though working in the
opposite direction was composer John Williams. There was no letdown in
sight for Williams at the start of 2002, with sequels for the
Star
Wars and
Harry Potter franchises in the near future and an
Indiana Jones score perpetually on the horizon. A standout score
for the maestro in the previous five years had indeed been
A.I.,
a work that accentuated the ills of that picture but, in so doing,
produced a beautiful listening experience. The half of its length that
accompanies the disillusioned vision of a bleak future of technology and
humanity serves as a close cousin to
Minority Report, for which
Williams was asked to compose yet another psychologically complex score
about a disturbing future scenario. In most productions, and especially
when working with Spielberg, Williams is involved with the project from
the very beginning of shooting. In the case of
Minority Report,
however, Williams was shown the picture after it was nearly completed,
allowing him to fully experience the psychology of the chase realized
throughout the story. He also composed this score immediately after
finishing
Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, allowing him little
preparation time for the Spielberg film.
In the end, though, Williams managed to produce a
well-rounded score for
Minority Report, with consistent elements
that weave in and out of the score in its entirety. It is a very
cohesive score in the sense that it reuses motifs and builds upon
instrumentation throughout its length until it finally releases all of
its energy at the end. Whether the score will be listenable beyond the
confines of the movie for most listeners, however, is another matter.
Spielberg has mentioned that
Minority Report is a film noir
throwback to the kind of suspenseful mysteries for which Bernard
Herrmann scored late in the Golden Age of Hollywood. With the disharmony
and tumultuous rhythms of Williams' score for this film, you can hear
that the composer was attempting to emulate the same kind of unnerving
suspense in grand fashion, as Herrmann succeeding in accomplishing time
and time again. In fact, the "Spyders" cue is obviously saturated with
Herrmann's mannerisms. Functionally speaking, Williams does succeed in
producing a solid suspense piece, but
Minority Report proves as
well that Williams still isn't the master of noir thrill that Herrmann
was. Williams' successful suspense scores follow a formula that boils
and churns rather than outwardly frighten a listener with layers of
dissonance. This is a rather surprising observation to make about
Williams, because it's so rare that he fails to accomplish any goal he
sets his mind to in the Bronze or Digital Ages. The composer's
dominating talents at melody always manage to influence even his darkest
of his suspense scores. In
A.I., in fact, the operatic moments of
thematic expression of love will far outweigh the action cues in most
listeners' memories. The same will be so with
Minority Report,
though the moments of harmony in the later portion of the score are so
few that there will be many listeners who will reject it simply for its
mostly abrasive nature. The suspense and chase cues may be functional,
but compared to Williams' body of work, they're quite unremarkable.
Lengthy cues of uneasy string meanderings paint a relatively unhappy
picture of America in 2054. A soft, but discomforting tapestry shapes
the somewhat more conventional action material from Williams that
follows.
The theme that Williams creates for the primary family
of characters is touching, though highly restrained. First heard on solo
horn at about the three-minute mark in "Minority Report," this idea is
expanded upon by piano in short suite format in "Sean's Theme" before
understandably providing an eerie ambience in the middle sequence of
"Leo Crow... The Confrontation." The intended noir elegance of the
theme's rising progressions of hope and redemption hints at the appeal
of Williams' other highly personal dramatic themes, and it is allowed to
flourish in the final, resolution cue of
Minority Report. "That
surprises a lot of people," explains Williams about the ending. "We've
been in a dark, futuristic mode and then, unexpectedly, there's this
lyricism reflecting a sense of innocence and hope." By the time the
listener has reached the final cue, he or she has already been
introduced to several highly engaging cues that shatter the quiet
intensity of the first half of the score. After the suite performance of
the theme, the album shifts into its enjoyable action material,
exploding with the beginning of "Anderton's Great Escape." Once the
chase begins to heat up, so does the rhythmic cohesiveness and volume of
Williams' music. Throughout the score, he uses the ethnically awkward
vocals of a single female soloist to perform an exotic, two-phrase theme
to represent the visions of the "precogs." Sharing characteristics with
the composer's theme for Lord Voldemort in the first two
Harry
Potter scores, this vocalized theme is not as reassuring as related
tones had been in
A.I., but rather intentionally foreign, adding
to the discomforting transformation of America in the latter half of
this century. Just like the harmonica that is electronically altered in
the sixth track to add even more flavor to the futuristic setting, the
vocals are electronically enhanced to create a disturbing, though
intriguing sound. "The electronic piece is synched up with the
orchestra," Williams states. "So it becomes a kind of loop that's
orchestral but also synthesized. It wafts through the film." The
"Visions of Anne Lively" cue offers the most explicit use of these
vocals, and it is only a pity that Williams did not utilize these
elements to an even greater effect.
Using the vocal and electronic effects as an accent to
the orchestral elements is one thing, but building the entire score
around them could have made
Minority Report into a spectacular
work. As it is,
Minority Report is a score to appreciate in its
parts but, ultimately, it's best placed in the context of the visuals.
It lacks the emotional reach or thematic integrity to stand out as a
great effort in Williams' remarkable career. No doubt distinguished
accompaniment for the film, the score on album stops short of involving
the listener until its latter stages, and an entire 45 minutes of
technically proficient, but cold material can pass by without the
complexity of emotion that we have come to expect from Williams. To the
trained ear, the references to Herrmann's work are interesting, if not
something of a cliche, though they still work in the film (which should
serve as a compliment to Herrmann's style of writing). The fact that the
score washes too pleasantly into a positive ending makes the first half
all the more disappointing; chalk that one up to Spielberg's need for
hopelessly optimistic Hollywood endings. Only a handful of the chase
sequences are intriguing enough in their construction (with the
incredible "Anderton's Great Escape" leading the way) to play with power
outside of the picture. The unfolding "Psychic Truth" is perhaps a
redeeming cue in terms of sheer weight and momentum. It is surprising
that Williams didn't create more elaborate or, at least, risk-taking
scores for these futuristic films.
A.I. did make use of
instrumentation that he had not employed the same way before, but
Minority Report is a comparatively conservative effort that
relies on Williams' existing stylistic skills rather than branching off
into new territory. This is a shame, because with the talent that
Williams displays on a regular basis, and the ruts that he seems to get
stuck in when restrained by sequel scores, it's disappointing to hear
him miss an opportunity to go off on a wild excursion into the musical
unknown. If the film itself is compared to a pre-crime case, then
Williams scored the present investigation rather than the time and place
at which that crime will eventually take occur.
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