Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if you enjoy Goldsmith's delicate themes of innocence performed by solo woodwinds over lofty strings and tingling electronics. Avoid it... if you prefer your thriller scores to actually thrill you, for the most interesting parts of this one will deceive you in their delightful beauty. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
Sleeping with the Enemy: (Jerry Goldsmith) Movies about sexual obsession and formulaic stalkers have rarely started as well as Sleeping with the Enemy did in its opening scenes. In her first major role after Pretty Woman, a timid Julia Roberts is emotionally and physically brutalized by her financier husband. He flaunts her beauty at parties while abusing her as a servant at home, and the early beachfront scenes in the film are filled with the promise of a dramatic and thoughtful plot. But after the wife flees several states away, tries to change her identity, and is confronted by the terror of her husband coming after her, the film becomes one of those cheap thrillers that hopes you actually believe the badguy is dead when he's got one last stab to go. Despite directing a few cult favorites in previous years, Joseph Ruben missed the mark with Sleeping with the Enemy, providing a stereotypical plot reminiscent of Fatal Attraction and filled to the brim with outrageous fallacies of logic. After being shunned by critics, the film made modest returns with only its star power to attract attention. One element of the film that proved to be somewhat awkward in the finished product was Jerry Goldsmith's mostly upbeat score. The legendary composer had transformed his horror scores from the grand scope of the Poltergeist and The Omen franchises into electronically assisted, less obvious variations for the smaller, more seedy horror projects he would accept in the early 1990's. Surprisingly, despite the film fitting this mold quite well, Sleeping with the Enemy has little to do with the prevailing attitudes of scores like Malice and Basic Instinct at roughly the same time. The score has its fair share of suspenseful moments and thud-inducing horror twists, but at its core is a melodic score that seems to indicate that Goldsmith was feeding off of the beauty of Roberts' character rather than the shades of Patrick Bergin's anger. As a result of the constant pull of the innocence of Roberts' character on Goldsmith's attention, Sleeping with the Enemy is a score with conflicting personalities. The theme that Goldsmith provides for the wife is as consistently charming as any the composer has ever written... for a drama or a children's film. And he doesn't try to fool you with it. The lofty woodwind solos over tingling electronics and high strings (and other lightly pulsating woodwinds) are just as gorgeous and soothing in the opening scenes as they are in "A Brave Girl" and at the finale of the picture. The theme and its instrumentation is absolutely trademark 1990's Goldsmith style, and the simplicity of the theme, along with its repetitive use, will remain in your head long after the score is over. Goldsmith allows a slight variant of this woodwind theme to be carried solely by string layers, as in the middle portions of "The Funeral," and the dramatic progression of these performances will remind you of the shameless John Barry drama technique (with similarities to High Road to China, coincidentally). The same cue also begins with a token nod to Bernard Herrmann's Cape Fear score --one of the greatest stalking/thriller scores in its effectiveness-- with meandering, rising string lines, tolling of chimes, and eerie pulsations from muted trumpets. Unlike Goldsmith's horror scores, in which the brass often punctuate horror jabs with rowdy hits, the moments of horror in Sleeping with the Enemy are treated to electronic clanging instead, with "The Carnival" and "Remember This" relying on textures from Goldsmith's synthetic library that we would rarely hear in other scores. These cues by no means represent Goldsmith's better half of suspense or horror scoring; in fact, you'll likely forget the five to seven minutes of suspense writing in the latter half of the score. The final cue returns to the deliberate beauty of the opening cue, but with an even faster and thicker bed of electronics. On album, the dozen or so minutes of score that you'll want to include on your compilations are completely exempt from the horror genre, so the music that you will get from Sleeping with the Enemy will have nothing to do with your expectations as a first-time listener. In the film, it's a mixed bag, but with superior sound quality and considerable airtime for the primary theme, the album is a solid investment for Goldsmith collectors. **** Track Listings:
Total Time: 41:30
(track times not listed on packaging) * Original recording performed by Van Morrison All artwork and sound clips from Sleeping with the Enemy are Copyright © 1991, Sony Music Entertainment/Columbia. The reviews and notes contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Filmtracks Publications. Audio clips can be heard using RealPlayer but cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 6/1/98, updated 8/13/06. Review Version 4.1 - PHP (Filmtracks Publications). Copyright © 1998-2005, Christian Clemmensen. All rights reserved. |
