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The World is Not Enough: (David Arnold) With
The
World is Not Enough, the 19th entry in the famed 007 franchise,
Pierce Brosnan was comfortably installed as James Bond and the tone of
the resurrected series was firmly set in a new technological age. This Bond
story differed most significantly from its predecessors because of its
greater integration of Bond's superior, 'M' (Judi Dench), into the field
of action, as well as the ramifications of her relationship with an
heiress brainwashed into helping the villains of the day. Sophie
Marceau's classy presence countered an otherwise ridiculous Denise
Richards as a nuclear scientist, and, at the end of the day, the film
was undemanding and quite entertaining. As usual, a handful of
outstanding action sequences defined a Bond film, and these lengthy
scenes are also the dominant factor in David Arnold's music for the
film. The young British electronica and orchestra blender had fallen
into the perfect venue in which to merge the two distinct halves of his
talents. His experience on
Tomorrow Never Dies wasn't entirely
smooth, with his song replaced and a post-production schedule that
prevented a well-rounded album release. Still, his music for the film is
generally considered to be extremely strong, the pinnacle of his
achievements throughout the years of Brosnan as 007. The mixture of his
electronica rhythms and sound effects was well matched with the jazzy
tradition of John Barry and the ethnic and orchestral elements in
Tomorrow Never Dies, and his song, "Surrender," was both
brilliantly written and performed. Arnold sought to continue the twist
of old and new for
The World is Not Enough, but given the even
higher level of technical sophistication exhibited in the plot, the
composer weighted the electronic elements more heavily this time around.
This emphasis on his newly trademarked sound of drum loops and excessive
metallic effects for the franchise is typically considered the defining
characteristic of the work.
Along with the shift towards the electronica elements,
Arnold's music for
The World is Not Enough also differed in that
it utilized the theme of the title song to a great degree in the score.
Arnold wrote the melody for the song "The World is Not Enough," and his
subsequent reliance on especially the three-note fragment containing the
lyrics "not enough" is a very satisfying technique of cohesion. Unlike
Tomorrow Never Dies, in which the title song eventually had
nothing to do with the score, and
Die Another Day, which, as
Arnold lamented, offered an atrocious Madonna song with no discernable
melody to adapt,
The World is Not Enough features an extremely
strong bond between its song and score. Arnold's adaptations of the
melody into his score are far more intelligent than John Barry's old
habit of only restating full reprises of his entire themes in lengthy
fashion. The fragments of the title theme here, as well as several
supporting elements, are really the greatest strength of
The World is
Not Enough. The performance of the song by Shirley Manson of the
American rock group Garbage is lacking in style. While the
instrumentation and progression of the song are well tied to the Bond
franchise, Manson's voice is sleazy rather than sultry, and thus the
song comes across as too grungy to support the underlying melody. In
these regards, it stumbles with the same lazy attitude as Sheryl Crow
and exhibits none of the high class of either k.d. lang or Tina Turner's
recent entries. The album release for
The World is Not Enough
also features the loungey jazz song "Only Myself to Blame," performed
with retro style by Scott Walker over muted trumpets and a traditional
jazz ensemble. This song doesn't make much sense in context, for it
fails to appear in the film and really has no connection to even the
casino music that Arnold wrote in his score. If the energy level of the
song had been kicked up a few levels, perhaps memories of the song from
From Russia With Love would be merited. As it is, however, this
inclusion of a totally irrelevant song is disappointing.
Aside from the melody of the title song in the score,
Arnold also writes a longing, distant theme for the bittersweet Elektra
King. This idea is explored by woodwinds and strings with delicate piano
accompaniment in "M's Confession" and "Elektra's Theme: The Bedroom,"
with appropriately fleeting variants that die away in "Remember
Pleasure." More appealing, though, is the straight love theme for Bond
and Christmas (the American scientist), which opens with the three note
"not enough" phrase from the title theme and then deviates into a
beautiful theme of its own that owes some tone and style to the Paris
love theme from the previous film. The only clear performance of this
idea on album occupies the quiet "Christmas in Turkey" celebration cue,
with two gorgeous piano renditions leading into an elegant closing
statement of Monty Norman's original bass progression. Even more
impressive is the fully orchestral performance of the theme in
traditional, bloated, Barry fashion in the unreleased cue "Snow
Business," which accompanies the breathtaking helicopter photography of
the scene with bold, harmonious horns in all their glory. This one cue (which
exposes the theme's substantial similarities to the "Safari" cue from Barry's
Out of Africa) is among the few truly symphonic delights of the entire
score. Two ideas seem to represent the villains of
The World is Not Enough,
and one of those is a recurring motif from
Tomorrow Never Dies. While
not readily obvious in his representation, the lead villain receives an
elusive, descending motif in "Remembering Pleasure," though this idea
eventually mingles with the Elektra theme (for good reason). Far more
enjoyable is the return of a great villain motif in
Tomorrow Never
Dies that apparently was meant by Arnold to serve the general
purpose of multiple Bond opponents. In
The World is Not Enough,
this idea is best heard over a twenty second stretch starting at about
4:45 into "Caviar Factory," which remains among the more vicious
confrontations Bond has ever had with the usual array of
abnormally-armed freaks. Unlike the other two scores in the opening
trilogy of Arnold's work for the franchise, this one seems to have fewer
clever references to other Bond scores on the whole, though.
The remaining cues on the album vary in purpose between
outrageous action, mundane conversational underscore, and a couple of
ethnic accents. Arnold doesn't let the conversation cues run long
without some reference to one of the score's themes, though none of them
is a particular highlight. The ethnic material exists in pieces
throughout the score, including the opening of "Caviar Factory," though
it really shines in "Welcome to Baku." While "Welcome to Baku" runs
under two minutes, it's definitely the highlight of album. For the
setting change in the plot (and once again another overhead shot), this
cue is a brilliant layering of both the traditional Bond rhythmic
progression and the title theme of the film, rendered with a stunning
blend of percussion, the usual brass, and Natascha Atlas'
always-alluring voice. For a reason still unknown, the cue was stripped
of Atlas' vocals when it appeared in the film, a definite blow to the
sense of awe that the transition on screen attempts to stir. Likewise,
the mix of the percussion and electronics in the action cues sometimes
varies between film and album. As mentioned before, Arnold's emphasis on
the techno elements in his action music for
The World is Not
Enough is really the score's downfall. One of the great appeals of
Tomorrow Never Dies was the fact that Arnold only used his native
electronica accents sparingly, leaving many of the early cues truly
symphonic and, when the film really heats up, using the drum loops and
slapping electronic percussion as an aid to the cue rather than its
driving force. For
The World is Not Enough, that equation is
flipped, with the same drum loops and an even harsher collection of
metallic percussion samples (or perhaps they're real; it's hard to tell)
mixed at the forefront and drowning out the orchestra's already
hyperactive level of activity. The orchestrations and pacing of many of
these cues are so frantic that the potentially intriguing intelligence
of the ensemble's melodic references are lost in the "wall of sound"
approach with which Arnold mixed the final product.
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In some cases, this excessive mix of slapping sounds is
uniquely appropriate. In the previous film, the "Bike Chase" cue had a
chopping helicopter blade as a lethal weapon, and here, the "Caviar
Factory" cue takes that menacing chopper mentality to another level. In
this cue, Arnold's blatant slashing sound effects are understandable. In
other cases, such as "Pipeline," the cue is overwhelmed by its abrasive
rhythmic pounding and obnoxious loops. There are exceptions, of course.
The "I Never Miss" cue is one such curious note; not only are the
electronics absent from the cue, making it a close cousin to the
first two cues from
Tomorrow Never Dies, but its recording
quality seems to offer the ensemble in a wetter, livelier mix. Also in
need of discussion is the lengthy cue that accompanies the boat chase
through London at the start of the film. Heard in "Come in 007, Your
Time is Up," this cue is somewhat frustrating, because if not for the
ridiculously distracting synthetic loops and sound effects, it would
easily be among the best of Arnold's production for the franchise. From
about 1:55 onward, this cue is a powerhouse combination of both the
Monty Norman theme and the new title theme for the film. Even with its
excessive percussion, it's still a largely enjoyable piece, though the
equivalent of the gunbarrel statement at the start is a bit heavy on the
electronics and Arnold's use of an echoing "wop-wop-wop" sound effect
(most prominent at 3:15 in the cue) is annoying. Overall,
The World
is Not Enough could easily have been a 4-star score if Arnold hadn't
tried so hard to beef up the electronica elements to obnoxious levels.
His other Bond scores prove that there is a happy balance to be had, but
he misses it here. This score remains, however, superior to
Die Another
Day. The album is incomplete and, unlike the other Arnold/Bond
scores, the music has never been fully leaked in bootleg form. That
unfortunately leaves unreleased the cues "Snow Business" and
"Kazakhstan" (with all three major themes and some wicked bass work on
Norman's theme in the latter), as well as the film's arrangement of the
end credits. If re-mixed and including the three cues named above, an
album for this score could be quite enjoyable. As is, the score and
album are just... not enough.
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| Bias Check: | For David Arnold reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating
is 3.33 (in 15 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.33
(in 42,389 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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