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Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if the soft, whispering tones of The Spitfire Grill and the local flavor of Fried Green Tomatoes both appeal to you. Avoid it... if you are expecting a piece as original in style as Pavilion of Women, or if you have adverse reactions to gospel and/or Southern folk. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
The Rising Place: (Conrad Pope) For the directorial debut of Tom Rice, The Rising Place is a simple love story set in the deep American South during World War II, with themes of racial relations, religious connections, and sorrowful loss. The film is saturated with all that is Americana, combining several different musical requirements into one little piece of history and location. The film passed without much attention in 2002, as did the score. For a long time, Conrad Pope has been orchestrating scores for major composers, including John Williams, but he served notice to the film music community in 2001 that he was hitting the composing business himself in a big way. His score for Pavilion of Women went equally unnoticed by many mainstream fans, however those who had the fortune of hearing it were almost always positive about its orchestral mastery. The Rising Place marks the second score that Pope has experienced on album. It features a strong, Americana effort from Pope, with several songs by Grammy award-winning performer Jennifer Holliday, who reportedly writes her own songs (and performs new songs) only rarely these days. The songs are an integral part of the film, and the opening piece co-written by Pope (integrating themes heard throughout the score, as well as David Foster's songwriting harmonics) contains the heart of the film, performed by Kendall Payne. The rest of the vocal performances are by Holliday, whose rich, texture voice best captures the spirit of the South. The songs, spread throughout the score on album, do hinder listeners who are keying in on Pope's material, and anyone offended by Gospel songs (which are, in this case, a bit heavy handed and burdensome in the topics of God and Jesus) may be frustrated with the listening experience. Many of these performances are solemn reminders of the pains of wartime at home. To enjoy Conrad Pope's score cues, which are substantial in length on the album despite the numerous songs, you have to treat this score much like Edmund Choi's The Dish. Both efforts are so closely adapted from either temp tracks or inspiration from other contemporary composers that you have to turn off that little voice in your head that continuously mentions connections between this other scores. But by mentioning perhaps these connections, you may get a good idea about what this score is like. It is mostly dramatic, although guitars and banjos in folksy rhythms offer Southern flavor right from Thomas Newman's Fried Green Tomatoes (especially in the light touch to the rhythm in "Three Friends"), to good effect. A more jazzy and welcomed, positive performance of locality is heard in "Melvina's Grill" and "Emily's Green Dress." These rip-snorting big band moments are the highlight of Pope's work here because of their originality. The "Flyboy March" is a direct tip of the hat to John Williams' 1941, intended or not, and a percussive performance true to Williams' style appears in "The Printing Press." Perhaps the most driving similarity in The Rising Place is to James Horner's The Spitfire Grill, with a flailing flute and piano motif taken note for note from Horner's score in Pope's cues for "Talk of the Town" and "Virginia Confesses." The mass of dramatic underscore, right down to the light choir employed, features the sensibilities of Horner's work, and those pesky anti-Horner people should be aware of this before investigating this score. A few moments from Pope's own large-scale writing in Pavilion of Women do shine through, however, with the best cue of the score being "The Rising Place," a fully orchestral statement of the original theme (with the sound of 85 performers) for the picture. On album, the score suffers from poor engineering. Several cues are distorted in the upper ranges (especially in "Three Friends" and "Summer of '45"), and this badly retards the listening experience on a large stereo (or surround) system at regular volumes. Perhaps the engineer prepared the master at too high a volume somewhere in the mix. At any rate, The Rising Place contains some masterful work from a talented composer, but it suffers from just a few too many references to other scores and poor sound quality to be really enjoyable. ***
The insert includes a note about the score by director Tom Rice. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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