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Composed, Co-Produced, and Performed by:
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Gabriel Yared
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Conducted by:
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Harry Rabinowitz
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Co-Produced by:
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Graham Walker
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Release Date:
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August 20th, 2002
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Availability:
Regular U.S. release.
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Filmtracks Editorial Review:
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Possession: (Gabriel Yared) Following his critical success with the
contemporary Nurse Betty, director Neil LaBute offers the A.S. Byatt tale
Possession of two university professors who uncover a plethora of love
letters written by two Victorian era poets who are attempting to pursue a romance
despite the strict societal mores of the time. While the two poets reach out to
each other, so do the two professors in modern day times as they travel in search
of the complete story of the two poets. The film takes on a distinct duality
during its shifts between time periods, showing us both pairs of characters as
they evolve. The music for the film, therefore, was met with the challenge of
appealing to modern audiences while also serving the needs of the Victorian
poets' romance. Although his activity in the larger American/Hollywood film scene
has been limited, the classical European composer Gabriel Yared was hired to
produce the music for the project. His previous scores have been, if not
successful, consistent in their postmodern statements of classical ideas from the
history of film music. His Academy Award winning score for The English
Patient began a widespread awareness of this sound, and it was furthered in
Message in a Bottle and The Talented Mr. Ripley. A solid example of
Yared's ability to provide a melancholy backdrop for a contemporary, urban
setting is Autumn in New York, a score rich with solemn texture.
The task of appealing to the ears of modern audiences --while appeasing the need
for a Victorian score-- was handled with a simple touch by Yared. Instead of
composing for two separate worlds and attempting to weave the two sounds together
as the couple get closer to one another, Yared provides an umbrella theme --one
which would suffice for both sets of characters. To do this, he created a lavish,
waltz-like theme with enormous structure and the needed somber performance to
represent the repression of the Victorian society. The result is a magnificent
title theme that is restrained slightly by its own weight. If you recall, Yared
does this quite often in his American-known works. The English Patient was
a largely subdued effort (taking an enormous performing group and holding it on a
leash just long enough to provide an epic sound for languishing characters) and
one of his better entries of the 1990's, Message in a Bottle was a
devastatingly haunting score of immense size as well. Yared writes the vocal
performance in Possession with the same kind of immeasurable solace that
was heard in the Sinead O'Connor performance of "Lullaby for Cain" in The
Talented Mr. Ripley. This time, Italian tenor Ramon Vargas, whose voice is
both rich and darkly hued, makes a good match for Yared's title theme for
Possession. The title presentation of "Aria" at the beginning of the RCA
album is no doubt the highlight of the score, with the full orchestral power of
the waltz and the tenor at work in all the glory of Yared's somber touch. The
remainder of the score offers two smaller motifs rather than any significant
subthemes, all of which maintain the same strong orchestral integrity. The lush,
romantic performance of the strings (specifically) are a throwback to the days of
high romance in 1950's and 1960's American cinema, and will likely appeal to
golden-age film score fans. Never does the score vary from the string-dominant
journey of these four characters, developing very slowly and always maintaining
an element of restraint.
The weakness of Yared's work for Possession is exactly that restraint. The
composer has shown the ability to burst out with major key themes of a faster
tempo, and certainly these talents could have been employed to represent the
modern professors in this film. There is a brief glimpse of this kind of
heightened pace in the "Journey to Whitby" cue, but it dies as quickly as it
gains your attention. Instead of continuing with a similar sound, Yared
--probably with the blessing of the director, LaBute-- draws parallels between
the two pairs in the consistency of orchestral style and theme in both worlds.
While likely functional, this approach leaves the listener wondering how the
score could have been improved upon if Yared had begun with a more contemporary
sound for the professors while maintaining the waltz for the Victorian poets.
Then, over the course of the film, he could have drawn the two together
musically, until such a time that the modern pair could have been greeted with a
full performance of the waltz from the other era. In any case, Possession
remains a work of a very typical kind for Yared. It is high quality, emotionally
distraught, aesthetically beautiful, and orchestrally rich and occasionally
powerful in substance. On the other hand, this score takes no chances and offers
no duality that the story could have benefited from greatly. The conservative
effort plays well on album, with over an hour of solid, uninterrupted orchestral
classicism. For some listeners, its consistency is so static that the score may
become "boring beauty," so to speak. The "Possesso" tenor performance at the
beginning is the obvious highlight, followed by the grand, but subdued score. It
may very well be an effort that plays better on album than in the film, but in
either case, the score leaves you wondering where this foundation of great music
could have traveled had Yared taken a more diverse approach to the project. ****
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Viewer Ratings and Comments:
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• 1. Possesso (Aria) - Ramon Vargas, tenor (5:04)
• 2. The British Museum (2:10)
• 3. Gentle Possession (5:27)
• 4. Discovering the Letters (3:23)
• 5. Maud and Roland in North Yorkshire (3:20)
• 6. Christabel's Room (1:59)
• 7. Maud and Roland (3:41)
• 8. Blanche's Diary (1:58)
• 9. Etude to Christabel (2:36)
• 10. Let Down Your Hair (3:51)
• 11. Dolly Hides a Secret (2:42)
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• 12. Possession (5:14)
• 13. Reading the Letters (5:17)
• 14. Blanche's Suicide (2:11)
• 15. Exile in Brittany (2:27)
• 16. Renewed Correspondence (4:05)
• 17. You Have a Daughter (2:26)
• 18. Journey to Whitby (1:47)
• 19. A Hotel Room in Whitby (1:54)
• 20. Poignant Thoughts (1:56)
• 21. Possession (Full Orchestra) (3:26)
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Insert includes a lengthy note about the film and score by director Neil LaBute.
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