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Conducted by:
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Pete Anthony
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Co-Produced by:
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Thomas Drescher
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Release Date:
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July 30th, 2002
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Availability:
Regular U.S. release.
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Filmtracks Editorial Review:
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Signs: (James Newton Howard) With one enormous and another moderate
success in collaboration thus far, director M. Night Shyamalan and composer
James Newton Howard team up for their third suspense adventure in Shyamalan's
young career, Signs. The scores for both The Sixth Sense and
Unbreakable were above average accents for films that didn't rely heavily
upon the music for their suspense. For Signs, a serious film about the
mysteries of crop circles around the globe (and how they drive one particular
American family to the brink of madness), Howard's music plays an even more
important role. While the mass majority of James Newton Howard's fans continue
to delight in his magnificently large-scale adventure scores of recent years
(Atlantis, Dinosaur), a small crowd is fastening itself to the
Howard/Shyamalan pairing. If anything, Howard has become an extension of
Shyamalan's psyche, with the music for his films minimalistic in style but rich
in texture. These scores haven't garnered awards recognition for Howard... nor
have they sold beyond their expectations on the record store shelves. But the
continuing quality of Howard's intense music for such an intense director is
always worth a listen or two.
Like The Sixth Sense, most specifically, Howard contributes to the story
with a heightened strength of one section of the orchestra. In the aformentioned
film, it was the piano. Here, the piano is joined by a doubling up on harps and
several woodwind instruments, including mostly flutes, oboes and clarinets.
Their often off-tone edges are combined with a plucking string motif at low
volumes, forming a style of mystery suited for the small-town nature of crop
circle incidents. Howard makes a major accomplishment in his score for
Signs by walking the thin line between hokey, back-roads instrumentation
and a true representation of the farm lifestyle, mentality, and most
importantly, setting at the heart of the film. To do this, Howard utilizes the
violins in a fiddle-like technique of inserting them off key for quiet periods
while the rest of the players perform their regular motifs. Slight electronics
--never so important in their volume or role as in other Howard/Shyamalan
scores-- offer the suspense associated with extra-terrestrial life, and a their
background consistency is toned to perfection in the fifth track on the album
("In the Cornfield"). The key shifts of Howard's motifs maintain a pleasant tone
for most of the score, perhaps to ease the minds of the audience into believing
that there is something neat or cool about crop circles, or perhaps to play to
that ill-fated notion that whatever is producing them must be benevolent.
Several cues offer cells of these string/woodwind motifs, with even some
finished off by a seductive harp or two. Minimalism of this interest, while
still producing the sullen atmosphere necessary for the film, are strong
candidates for listening ar high volumes. Only in a few tracks does Howard
resort to the necessary full orchestra hits/blasts for frightening moments on
screen. The majority of the rest of the score is a somber realm of low brass and
the occasional repetition of a piano motif in mutliple keys.
As he has become accustomed to doing, Howard does leave the listener and
movie-going audience with some satisfaction at the end of the score and album.
The final two part cue, "The Hand of Fate," may leave some aspects of the plot
unresolved in its continued texture of suspense, but it does allow for the most
thematic contribution of the full orchestra to finish the film. The score
doesn't have a theme per se, but relies on several lengthy shifts of key (much
like The Sixth Sense) to determine a shift in emotion and therefore
function in the same capacity as a theme. The finale cue does resemble, in its
strings, a brief theme, but the continued woodwind flights behind that theme are
the key to that sequence. The personality of the score lies in the difficult
subtleties of precise instrumentation and key shifts. This is minimalism with
style and strength, and Howard's partnership with Shyamalan continues to yield
fascinating work. From the other persepctive, Signs isn't as haunting as
The Sixth Sense, nor perhaps as creative as Unbreakable. It lacks
the beauty of similarly constructed suspense scores such as John Debney's
Dragonfly. What it is lies in its funtionality and will only be suited
for a small audience on album. At 45 minutes, the Signs album is
reasonable in length, though short in memorability (other than the mood it
creates). It's a score the should be appreciated in its film, and perhaps
recognized thereafter on album. Nevertheless, Howard's work continues to
impress, no matter the volume of the instrumentation. ***
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Viewer Ratings and Comments:
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• 1. Main Titles (1:45)
• 2. First Crop Circles (3:15)
• 3. Roof Intruder (2:19)
• 4. Brazilian Video (1:56)
• 5. In the Cornfield (5:42)
• 6. Baby Monitor (1:09)
• 7. Recruiting Office (2:11)
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• 8. Throwing a Stone (5:47)
• 9. Boarding Up the House (3:00)
• 10. Into the Basement (5:23)
• 11. Asthma Attack (3:42)
• 12. Hand of Fate, Pt. 1 (5:32)
• 13. Hand of Fate, Pt. 2 (3:48)
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The insert includes a list of the Los
Angeles musicians who performed the score, but no extra information about the
film or score beyond that.
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