Buy it... if your interest could be captured by a significantly ominous, minor key variation on Portman's usual string and woodwind leanings.

Avoid it... if no variation on Portman's lush, upbeat styles (which make an appearance here as well) will cause you to expand your collection of her works.

Portman

Oliver Twist: (Rachel Portman) Charles Dicken's first full novel was published in 1838, and as such, Oliver Twist is among the author's better known stories about early 19th-century London. It has been put onto the big screen several times, including most notably Sir David Lean's classic 1948 version and the Academy Award winning musical adaptation of the stage hit Oliver! in 1968. There are subthemes that not only connect the 2005 version by Roman Polanski to his previous film, The Pianist, but also to the director's own childhood. Polanski's intent in remaking Oliver Twist once again was to place an emphasis on the humor and eccentricities of the larger-than-life characters rather than get caught up in the doom and gloom of the destitute side of life in London at time. The usual score collaborator for Polanski, Wojciech Kilar, has taken a leave of absence from film music, which is unfortunate, given that Kilar's often dark sensibilities would seem to suit the Dickens story quite well. If you immediately turn and see that romance-writing veteran Rachel Portman has replaced Kilar, a certain amount of head scratching is warranted. But if you take Polanski's words to heart (that he wanted to make his Oliver Twist a profile of quirky characters), then perhaps a more sinister variation on Portman's Addicted to Love is exactly what's needed. Portman's career has been steadily retaining its strength since her initial Academy Award win almost a decade ago, with her first Emmy nomination coming earlier this year and several feature scores that maintain the status quo of her viability in Hollywood. While Oliver Twist hasn't proven to be the success that Polanski always has the potential of producing, Portman's score (performed with intent by the impressive City of Prague Philharmonic) is predictably solid in its intended place. For experts of Dickens' sour tales, the important thing to remember here is that Polanski and Portman met Dickens in the middle, so the assignment is not quite as awkward as one might first believe.

	Learn about supporting Filmtracks

The opening sequences of London feature Portman's title theme for Oliver Twist in the typical positive, fluid string manner, and although this brighter vision of London might be more appropriate for a Jane Austen story, Portman abandons this lighthearted theme between the opening and closing cues. Structurally, this is the same old Portman; she is capable of producing truly unique horror and suspense music, as heard in The Manchurian Candidate last year and especially The Truth About Charlie a few years earlier, but that's not how she went about Oliver Twist. Her string and woodwind sensibilities are intact, but think of this score as a significantly heavier variation on Addicted to Love. The frenetic action sequences in that comedy score have been turned into a dramatic minor key the likes of which Portman hasn't shown us yet. Her preference to operate in lengthy rhythmic sequences once again makes her music appealing on album, even though she does her concerted best to provide ominous tones throughout. From the eighth track on album, these rhythms combine with a subtheme best described as the either the Fagan or "bad Oliver" representation. Rooted in uncharacteristically strong bass strings, Portman provides a simple, alternating theme in "The Robbery" remarkably similar to the theme John Williams conjured for Lord Voldemort in his first two Harry Potter efforts (and it goes all the way back to Toto's title theme for Dune, if you want to stretch it that far back). By the sixteenth cue on album, the woodwinds have descended so far into the bass regions that the music is a barely recognizable mutation of Portman's styles. A rousing, positive finale pulls the score from these depths for fans of the syrupy Portman norm. But the darker side of Portman is on display here, and her ventures into the minor key with bass strings and bass bassoons are an intriguing variant for fans tired of her usual upbeat writing. One significant flaw is that she does not provide a recognizable maturation of any musical idea for the boy himself, leaving the emotions of the story as a whole as her inspiration. Despite critics' appraisal of Oliver Twist as "the same old Portman," give the second half of the score a good listen and you'll hear a worthy variation on that tune. ****   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For Rachel Portman reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.26 (in 28 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.23 (in 25,299 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.