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The Remains of the Day: (Richard Robbins) During
the four decades of filmmaking by Merchant Ivory Productions, the times
never got better than the early 1990's. The pair of
Howards End
and
The Remains of the Day represented the pinnacle of
achievements by director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant,
earning substantial awards recognition for their style of filmmaking and
raking in the greatest fiscal returns of their collaboration. To the
benefit of the 1993 entry,
The Remains of the Day, glowing
response from
Howards End and a reunion of lead actors Anthony
Hopkins and Emma Thompson yielded tremendous interest in the otherwise
fairly typical topic for the Merchant Ivory focus. Hopkins plays the
head butler of a respected and stately 1930's English manor and his sole
purpose in life is to preserve the tradition and order of the past in
his supervision and teaching of the younger generation of servants.
During his tenure, the owner of the estate engages in several high
stakes political conferences at the residence, eventually revealing
himself to be a Nazi appeaser and bringing disgrace to the manor. An
even greater test for the butler is the arrival of the head housemaid
played by Thompson, who eventually falls in love with the butler but is
unable to coax the rigid man out of his dutiful persona. Decades later,
after she leaves the employment of the manor, they reconcile to a degree
but are left to contend with love unrealized as the butler returns to
serve a new, American owner of the mansion (Christopher Reeve, in a
notable appearance just before his paralyzing accident). Among the
notable Merchant Ivory collaborators to return for duties on
The
Remains of the Day was composer Richard Robbins, who had split the
series' assignments with Richard Bennett but who remains the better
known name because of his work on the most famous entries. While
Robbins' music for these movies was always serviceable, it never tended
to draw attention to itself. In his two Oscar-nominated efforts, this
and
Howards End, his music was somewhat overshadowed by source
placements in the film, though whereas the earlier score truly did not
deserve its recognition, the original music for
The Remains of the
Day is far better in accomplishing its goals for the narrative.
Never should you expect to be blown away by a Robbins score, and in this
case, there are some disastrous sound issues as well, but this 1993
score does at least have some interesting ideas and lasting highlights.
Unlike
Howards End, which is a mess of a score in terms of
cohesive development, this one is very tightly organized and features
several smart rhythmic and instrumental techniques.
Robbins focused squarely on the cyclical, nearly
mechanized nature of the butler's duty to perfection in
The Remains
of the Day, basing the score on a rising rhythmic figure that
evolves well throughout. Early on, this rhythm's base of plucked,
clock-like tones is augmented (quite surprisingly) by synthesizer,
giving it the appropriately cold personality necessary for the
character. By the final cue, it has become increasingly organic,
however, denoting perhaps some small softening in the butler's nature.
The theme that Robbins explores above this rhythm is a bit generic, but
it maintains its tortured personality through the end, representing an
interesting balance of 1950's Bernard Herrmann undulation and 1970's
John Williams progressions of lament. By "Loss and Separation," the
rhythm has been transferred to woodwinds and the theme to saxophone, the
warmest expression of romance you'll likely find from Robbins for one of
these films. While this theme dominates early and late in the score, the
composer does explore less imposing ground in between. Starting in "The
Keyhole and the Chinaman" and culminating in "The Cooks in the Kitchen,"
Robbins uses woodblocks in haphazard rhythms to spice up the
inner-workings of the servants at the manor, the latter cue among the
composer's most manically playful career moments. The end of "Tradition
and Order" generates the same feeling as well, an interesting twist on
the stateliness that you'd expect to hear from Robbins for this
occasion. Some of that stature does present itself in "The Conference
Begins," which is one of the score's striking applications of
trumpet-led orchestral melody. There are moments of somber toil in this
score that rely solely open the rumbling of the main rhythmic figure,
"Sir Geoffrey Wren and Stevens, Sr." and "You Mean a Great Deal to This
House" taking the motif into a realm similar to Jerry Goldsmith's
Islands in the Stream. A pair of source tracks, a Schubert opera
piece and a vintage performance of "Blue Moon," offer lengthy breaks
from the otherwise consistent flow of the score. Unfortunately for the
album experience of
The Remains of the Day, there is severe audio
distortion during moments of even moderate volume. You first hear this
distortion during the timpani-pounding moments late in "Opening Titles,
Darlington Hall" and it eventually swallows up the whole soundscape in
the final three score cues. Nearly unlistenable is "Loss and
Separation," those sax performances rendered useless by low-end garbling
of the mix. The same effect diminishes "Appeasement/In the Rain" as
well, though perhaps some solace can be taken in the fact that the most
dynamic cues, like "The Cooks in the Kitchen," do not suffer this
problem. If not for this terrible distortion of the bass region on
album, the score would be worthy of a four star rating, but so much of
it is unlistenable that it's ultimately impossible to recommend the
product.
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The insert includes background notes about the film, composer, and score,
including some information from Robbins himself.
