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Open Water: (Graeme Revell) Chalk up yet another movie
in the "who the hell would want to pay to see this?" category. With its
gruesome plot line widely publicized, it's safe to say that
Open
Water is based on the true story of Queensland's Great Barrier Reef
Tragedy. Vacationers Tom and Eileen Lonergan went on a diving expedition
with 26 others on a charter vessel owned by Outer Edge Dive Company from
Australia in January, 1998. While the Lonergans were still scuba diving, the
other 24 divers had quickly completed their dives and re-boarded the vessel.
The captain of the boat, Jack Nairn, neglected to do a head count and just
assumed that everyone had boarded (there are reports that he was in a hurry
to get back to a party at the port). With the Lonergans innocently stranded
at sea and with no discovery of their absence made for two days, they were
left to die in shark-infested waters. Nobody should be fooled about the
outcome of events in this film, but the intentionally low-budget production
of the picture --including the use of a home video digital camera to shoot
the film-- managed to create a
Blair Witch Project-kind of hype that
built the film as an independent to watch in the late summer of 2004.
Critical response to the film was somewhat positive, with the play upon
phobias seeming to work on hardened critics. Response from audiences,
however, has been much more varied, with complaints about the film's obvious
and terrible outcome coming from viewers who felt in need of a nice walk in
the park after seeing such a downer. Others have stated that the 87-minute
film is an unqualified bore, and perhaps some of the blame for such
criticism rests on the shoulders of composer Graeme Revell. With his most
recent effort being
The Chronicles of Riddick, it's easy to state
that
Open Water is about as different from Revell's previous work as
it could possibly be.
How Revell ended up on this project is a mystery, but his
music for
Open Water is as minimalistically structured as any he has
ever written. Composed and programmed for performance by just one artist at
the synthesizer,
Open Water has very little noteworthy material of
which to speak. The most interesting aspect of the score is that Revell made
no attempts to hide the outcome of the expedition. The music drones without
character before dive just as much as it does as the primary characters die.
There was definitely no George Fenton-like
Deep Blue inspiration to
be heard before everything goes wrong. Only three subtle deviations from the
monotone droning can be discussed. First, Revell uses the chopping of a
helicopter blade to represent the arrival of the sharks. As they close in
for the kill in "Sharks Circle," Revell presents a slow banging of a drum to
signify death. Otherwise, the only break from the constant droning is the
short blast of drums heard as the discovery of the couple's absence is
finally realized. Revell's score on album is less than 12 minutes, and his
material is supplemented by one cue by Yoav Goren and Jeff Fayman (the
totally non-descript "Dive Boat Leaves the Site"), as well as a collection
of hymns, chain gang songs, and blues music that serves as source material for
the region. Their use in the film accentuates the fact that these two
city-dwellers stranded in the ocean can't be further from home. On album,
the songs' varying tones of spirit, including a significant amount of
archival sound, could not differ more from the drab score by Revell. The
Indonesian girls choir in "Yendisare Aimando" is perhaps too celebratory
compared to what follows, but its beauty is easily the highlight of the
album. It is a rare case where the source songs are superior to the score on
an album, but Revell's music is so bland that the source songs are the only
reason to purchase the
Open Water album. The lack of imagination in
Revells work here far outweighs any effectiveness that he was hoping to
achieve through the intentionally droning and singular approach. Skip the
film and album and go straight to the nice walk in the park.
*
| Bias Check: | For Graeme Revell reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating
is 2.67 (in 18 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 2.78
(in 13,793 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
