Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... only if you enjoyed the piano performances and occasional orchestral swells heard in the context of the film. Avoid it... if you prefer Clint Eastwood's acting and directing abilities over his amateurish, uninteresting, and barely sufficient composing techniques. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
Mystic River: (Clint Eastwood) The 24th film for Eastwood as a director, Mystic River marks the fourth time he served as the project's composer as well. He doesn't often direct movies in which he does not also star, but Mystic River (along with 1997's underrated Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil) was a notable exception. Dennis Lehane's best-selling 2001 novel "Mystic River" had been best described as a contemporary Shakespearean tragedy set on the mean streets of South Boston. The friendship and gruesome bond that connects three boys and their adulthood counterparts lands them in the middle of a tense murder mystery when one of their daughters is murdered, another one of them is a suspect, and a third is the cop investigating the crime. The film was hailed as one of the best dramas of 2003 and served Eastwood his best chance in an awards season since Unforgiven ten years earlier. While leaving the bulk of the film's workload for the six or seven primary actors to carry, Eastwood takes on much of the rest of the production duties himself, including the composition of the score. For people who grew up watching Eastwood kill without remorse on screen in all of those 1960's and 1970's Westerns and brainless cop thrillers, the idea of hearing him compose a serious, dramatic score for a major motion picture, despite his known talents on the piano, was quite frightening. His music for Space Cowboys, Absolute Power, and The Bridges of Madison County wasn't widely recognized for its quality (or even its effectiveness), and Eastwood often relied upon Lennie Niehaus and others to flesh out the ideas he had for the scores to his own films. While he technically takes solo credit for the composing duties for Mystic River, he once again employs the assistance of his friends and family to assist in adapting, orchestrating, arranging, and conducting the score. Interestingly, while the film only took 39 days to shoot in 2002, the score itself was four months in the making for Eastwood. His choice for the recording ensemble was the Boston Symphony Orchestra, of course, since he seemed preoccupied with keeping the entire production rooted in the Boston area. Two source cues are offered by Eastwood's son, Kyle, a well known musician in the New York jazz community who would increase his contributions to his father's films in subsequent years. The score that Eastwood composed for Mystic River on piano back in Carmel, California, is not the synthetic or contemporary variety that you would expect from an unseasoned composer. Eastwood did seem to have a distinct orchestral sound in mind when shooting the picture, and that sound includes a chorus to back the weighty orchestral performances. Unfortunately, when you attempt to analyze the music apart from the picture, the simplicity of its construction detracts from its listenability. The mood is right, and in the film, the music probably suffices for any viewer. But the substance just isn't there, and the amateurish construction of score can be no better summed up than in the lengthy sequences of extended whole notes for the orchestra. Moments of terror and fright in the score are badly underplayed, poorly using dissonant techniques. The passages for the entire ensemble are pleasant and harmonious, but they lack counterpoint, decent orchestration, and true direction. Eastwood's themes seem to work considerably better when performed by a solo piano, as is the case for several cues in Mystic River. A decent piano player himself, Eastwood's piano compositions had appeared effectively in films before, and they set an adequate style of anguish and loss for the characters in this film as well. But when the full ensemble is engaged, the score suffers from its own basic, drawn-out melodrama. The strings carry very slow progressions and are accompanied by the piano and the occasional woodwind. It's difficult to say the following remark, because it is an insult to any artist, but the score for Mystic River sounds like the work of a college student, a composer in need of five to ten more years of experience before being able to write a dramatically effective score. Compounding the problem is an anemic performance by the symphonic players. At times, the simplicity of Mystic River is forgotten, but this only happens when the chorus adds a spiritual element of grandeur to the equation. Otherwise, when heard on album, the score is uninteresting and underdeveloped, alternating between frustratingly sparse orchestral cues and the more sustainable piano solos. The two contributed pieces by Eastwood's son are out of place, but complete the musical representation of the film. Overall, this is a score that has to be appreciated in the context of the film, and unfortunately the experience would not deter the director from relying too heavily on himself for the underachieving music in his following projects. ** Track Listings:
Total Time: 62:25
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