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| • | Newest Major Reviews: | . | • | This Week's Most Popular Reviews: | • | Best-Selling Albums: | ||
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Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if you typically relax to John Barry's soothing, thematically simplistic compositions for strings and woodwinds in the 1990's. Avoid it... if Barry's other early 1990's dramas tend to put you into a funk of boredom and restlessness. Original Review, by Christian Clemmensen
Three themes delicately grace My Life, including the usual light romantic affair for layered strings over the titles. Its simple harmonies and predictable progressions will either relax or bore you, depending, as usual, on your predisposition towards these kinds of Barry scores. A secondary theme on piano serves as a "love theme" for the wife of the terminally ill father, though Barry intermingles this theme so often with the primary string theme that it's more of an interlude within the larger title theme. A third theme, or more of a motif, is inserted to represent the more hopeful, innocent side of parenthood, and it is this element that gives My Life its sole unique element. For these playful, comedic scenes, Barry utilizes a light synthetic pipe organ and gentle snare rhythm to add a spark of life to the score. While the cues that include this instrumentation and rhythm were primarily meant to represent the backyard circus environment seen in the picture, the slight hope that this rhythm gives to the score also happens to save the listening experience from a certain amount of monotony. The cue "Child's Play" presents a brief splash of jazz with the tambourine and piano, and provides the same relief to this score that the "The Roll Dance" cues served in Chaplin. Only one cue of significant power exists in My Life, with a more thunderous percussion use under a brass subtheme in "The Roller Coaster." Outside of these few exceptions, the score is a love affair with the string and woodwind sections. Solo flute performances are as entertaining in My Life as they would be in Cry, The Beloved Country. Both the woodwinds and the synthetic rhythms (including the light metallic percussion that comes with the synths) benefit greatly from Barry's usual crisp sound quality. As is true with most of Barry's lush scores through the years, a generous mix between wet atmosphere and accentuated solos aids the score's soothing effect. Barry slows his themes and even staggers them in fragments as Keaton's character begins to lose motor control of his own body, a subtle but noteworthy technique in later cues. Overall, you can easily predict whether you'll enjoy this typical Barry drama depending on your opinion of his dozen other similar scores from the era. Expect nothing more and nothing less. ****
Review #2, by Marc Larock
My Life: (John Barry) My Life is one of the best scores John Barry has written in the 90's, yet it is becoming rare and challenging to find in stores. This score will make a great addition to any John Barry fan's collection. In My Life, Barry, using his trademark sweeping, heartfelt style, translates it to the listener in three primary emotions; that of love, loss, and nostalgia. The main theme serves as the love theme (which also appears in tracks 5,11, and the end credits). Its emotional power is stunning in its intensity. This theme is equatable to the John Dunbar Theme from Dances With Wolves, except the My Life theme is accented by an oboe. The oboe serves as a magnificent tool for Barry to utilize in a theme of this nature, it fills the theme with such a tender, profound sense of longing that only an oboe or flute could provide. The main theme is also an example of the knack John Barry has for evoking so much emotional power within a short period of time. The whole score is redolent of feelings of loss. However, track four seems to deal directly with emotions surrounding death and bereavment. This track is actually very unpleasent to listen to and is an extremly intense contrast with the other softer tracks on the album. Yet, at the end of the track, after a few minutes of harsh low sounding dark strings with rumbling drums in the background, Barry ends the track with a delightful arrangement of the main theme. My favorite tracks on the album are the nostalgic-sounding ones. To hear synthesized elements in a John Barry score of this emotional provocation, is not only rare but a pleasant surprise. Throughout the score, John Barry incorporates synthesized sounds that are reminiscent of circus music. These synthesized circus sounds become a leitmotif throughout the score, which was a brilliant tool to use given the content and themes of the film. These nostalgic tracks (namely tracks 2,6,7,8,11,12 and 13) contain a distinct delicate and tender quality that seems to be filled with so much yearning,desire, and longing. In these tracks Barry utilizes his trademark flute solo, and orchestra. The second to last track is also a favorite of mine. It starts out softly and subdued, almost feeble, a timpani drum, low strings and very soft high strings. Later, it blossoms into a triumphant exalted brass cue followed by a very soft orchestral woodwind ending. John Barry concludes the score with an end credits track, containing ambrosial and beautiful musical phrases tied together by invigorating and provocative utterances of melodious eloquence, characteristic of Barry's best work. ****
The insert includes not extra information about the score or film. Barry dedicates the score to Sondra Rubin. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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