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The Notebook: (Aaron Zigman) An arthouse film from
New Line Cinema that took everyone by surprise with its sustained box
office success throughout the summer of 2004,
The Notebook is a
tender love story spanning the generations since World War II. It
features James Garner as a man who reads his own stories of romance to a
similarly aged woman at a nursing home, with the film transitioning
between the present moment of storytelling and the 1940's era of youth
and romance in America's Deep South. Inevitable from the first moments
of the film, it is revealed that Garner's character and the elderly
woman at the modern-day nursing home are by coincidence the same two
lovers at the heart of the 1940's story. Their first encounter was
separated by World War II, but they passionately reunited seven years
later despite realizing that their lives had taken substantially
different paths. Their meeting at the nursing home eventually allows
them to relive and tie up the loose ends of their youth (cynics with no
"chick flick" tolerance are free to insert a comment here about elderly
sex killing its participants). The wide release of the film was met by
ambivalent critics who were somewhat unmoved of the excessively syrupy
nature of the story, but $115 million in box office earnings later, the
film has survived because of the large population of die-hard romantics
that have embraced it with great affection. The story also appeals to
those whose loved ones have suffered from Alzheimer's disease, a central
hindrance to the reunion of the old lovers. The project was helmed by
actor-turned director Nick Cassavetes, whose only notable (and recent)
film had been 2002's
John Q, and his mother, Gena Rowlands,
portrays the elderly lady at the nursing home. Cassavetes once again
hired composer Aaron Zigman, with whom he had worked on
John Q,
to write the conservatively pretty original score material for
The
Notebook. Zigman was relatively unknown as a solo composer at the
time, but he had already been active as an arranger and producer for
both the pop and film score genres. His influence was heard the most by
score collectors in such Disney scores as
Pocahontas and
Mulan. In the greater scheme of things, Zigman had earned a
living through his involvement with recordings by Phil Collins, Tina
Turner, Seal, and half a dozen other top-of-the-line artists, though his
compositional efforts during the rest of the 2000's proved him to a
capable and reliable composer for the romantic comedy genre.
In the orchestral arena during the early years of his
career, Zigman had composed multiple concerts performed in the Los
Angeles area, often resting along softer and more romantic lines of
writing. That style of work proved to be good practice for
The
Notebook, a score that relies upon subdued, passionate
sentimentalism for much of its length. A piano-dominated score, Zigman's
work functions as mostly a table-setter for the flashbacks in the film,
drawing upon a wealth of beauty and sadness for the scenes with the
elderly couple, though his general tones doesn't change much when the
score shifts into 1940's mode. With only one substantial theme featured
in the film,
The Notebook both wins and loses points for its
consistency. What the film gains from that steady diet of predictable
musical nourishment through the use of the same piano, woodwind, and
string melodies to eventually draw the younger and older couple together
is also somewhat of a detriment when heard out context. The arguably
somber and restrained score has to overcome the employment of a variety
of period songs faithful to the 1940's sequences in the story. Several
well known 1940's era jazz pieces from Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington,
Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, and Jimmy Durante highlight the frivolous
actions of the younger couple in the flashbacks, and they instill the
sense of excitement that the score fails to achieve. This is certainly
no negative comment on Zigman's work, since the intent of his extremely
transparent, minimalistic score was to accentuate the lost passion and
remembrance rather than stir listeners with his own 1940's adaptations.
A lovely soundtrack by all means, the Zigman portions of music do suffer
from their lack of development beyond the same set of performances of
the title theme that rotate in subtle fashion between sections of the
orchestra. A narrative arc is nonexistent until some depth in the
ensemble's performance during "Our Love Can Do Miracles" finally
instills a greater sense of warmth to the score. Only the "House
Blues/The Porch Dance/The Proposal/The Carnival" cue offers original
source material outside the very comfortable realm of Zigman's soft
sentimentality, and it serves as a welcome burst of pizzazz in the
middle of the album. That album does represent the film quite well, the
score understandably shuffled into the right places in between the
period songs. Because of the alternation between songs and score,
Zigman's work can potentially become lost in the spirit of the former
group, but the score cues are fortunately long enough in each case to
reestablish their mood. Overall, the score is both pleasant and
nostalgic, but the jazz songs really do steal the show with their
diversity and vibrant personality.
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The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
