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| Kloser |
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| Wanker |
10,000 BC: (Harald Kloser/Thomas Wanker) Racist?
Perhaps. Stupid? Definitely. Little positive can be said about Roland
Emmerich's 2008 prehistoric mishap titled
10,000 BC. It basically
tells of a disgraced hunter of the Ural mountain region who has to
assemble the tribes of Africa to rescue a kidnapped woman of another
tribe in his homeland and defeat the nasty, enslaving forces of
"civilized" ancient Egypt. Unfortunately, he's a white dude, the girl is
white with blue eyes that are key to her mystical survival, and all of
the brutes who need organized are black men. As such,
10,000 BC
was the target of claims of racism at its debut, a problem only
compounded when critics absolutely blasted the film for a plethora of
other faults. Nobody expected Emmerich, this generation's master of
disaster, to direct, write, and produce a masterpiece, but the
mind-boggling quantity of poor special effects shots, historical
inaccuracies, insanely bad dialogue, and ridiculously slow pacing made
10,000 BC even worse than anyone could have anticipated. Its only
redeeming aspects are narration from Omar Sharif, who must have taken a
break from his head-butting exercises for this occasion, and the
improvement of the effects in time for a few encapsulating shots of a
pyramid being built and destroyed at the climax of the picture.
Audiences didn't seem to mind this brainless entertainment, eventually
turning the $100 million production into $300 million in theatre and
home video grosses. Among the more generically pleasing elements of the
picture for the mainstream was its soundtrack, a collaborative effort
between Harald Kloser, Thomas Wanker, and Thomas Schobel. Kloser and
Wanker had become Emmerich's replacement for David Arnold in
The Day
After Tomorrow and would go on to reprise the partnership for
2012. In the case of Kloser,
10,000 BC also represented a
screenwriting debut, a humiliating effort (which would have been better
if the superior whites in the story didn't speak English!) that didn't
deter Emmerich from allowing the composer to co-write
2012 as
well. Kloser's composing partner was in the process of moving to England
and changing his name from Wanker to Wander, neither of which
particularly appealing in English. And Schobel, a Kloser associate,
impressed the production with a variety of primal percussive sounds that
afforded him some co-compositional credit in the end. The vocal talents
of Joel Virgel early in the production process of the score earned him
the role of a tribal leader in the film.
Hans Zimmer wasn't a member of the team for
10,000
BC, but he may as well have gotten some credit at the end of the day
as well. More on that issue will come later in this review. For a casual
listener not concerned with the history of film scores,
10,000 BC
is easily the best musical achievement in the early Emmerich/Kloser
collaborations. Unlike
The Day After Tomorrow and
2012,
the richly textured
10,000 BC is engagingly melodic and contains
the kind of unique orchestrations absent from the other scores. The
first music conceived for the picture represents the primordial,
source-like chants of the African tribes, courtesy Schobel's percussion
and Virgel's vocals. These sequences (as heard on album in "Opening,"
"Celebration," and "Food") meet the expectations of regional stereotypes
without being particularly tacky, but they still translate into the
album's most challenging moments. The second major part of the score for
10,000 BC is its unrestrained orchestral lyricism. The broadly
majestic symphonic sway of the score's two major themes yields several
moments of notice in the film. The primary theme for the protagonist is
an optimistic representation of fluid movement that's as easy to digest
as anything you'll hear in popcorn-ready film music. Heard first in
"Speech," this theme simmers late in "I Was Not Brave" (highlighted by
gorgeous ethnic woodwind), shows signs of redemptive life for the full
ensemble in "Lead Them," and unleashes a monumental performance with
bold counterpoint in "Sea of Sand." The idea is expressed at great
length in "The End" and "10,000 BC/End Credits," likely the two most
impressive tracks for casual listeners of the album. The theme actually
has three distinct phrases, interchanged and overlapped at will. The
main phrase is the most frequently stated portion of the theme, utilized
in every circumstance and ending each section of its progression with
three distinctly descending notes. A phantom "A" phrase that sometimes
precedes this theme is unfortunately underplayed in
10,000 BC, a
John Debney-like fantasy progression heard at 1:25 into "Sea of Sand"
and at 0:45 into "10,000 BC/End Credits." The main phrase that follows
often utilizes an underlying rhythmic device on strings that sometimes
branches out on its own. Debuting at about 0:40 into "Speech" and
lending gravity at 1:00 into "The End," the idea is accelerated at 1:30
into "10,000 BC/End Credits" and becomes its own separate phrase within
the theme. Its ability to generate momentum within a cue makes it an
invaluable partner to the main theme.
Aside from all of the various facets of the primary
thematic identity, the female lead receives her own pretty little theme
in "Evolet" (enticing woodwinds here function well) and "You Came For
Me," the latter cue morphing the idea into the protagonist's theme.
Finally, the third aspect of the score is the brutal tone for the
civilized Egyptians, which very successfully merges the two previously
mentioned elements of instrumentation into some ballsy enslavement
music. Utilizing percussion slammed with ferocity, this idea is
overlayed with mournful chants and angry, yelled vocals, often screaming
in surprisingly palatable harmony with the joining orchestral ensemble.
An actual theme for this portion exists at 0:40 into "Mountain of the
Gods" and the icing on the cake is the use of massive ancient horn
sounds to represent the mammoths (or mannaks, as they're called here)
carrying the heavy loads. The distant horn effect is a blend of an
animal's death cry and the whistle you hear on large, industrial
assembly lines, easily the single most impressive aspect of Kloser,
Wanker, and Schobel's efforts for
10,000 BC. It literally gives
you the feeling that an immense undertaking of prehistoric proportions
is in process, and its mix is also very expertly applied in harmony with
the ensemble. A highlight of the score comes in the middle of "Speech,"
when a bold performance of the main theme with impressive brass
counterpoint is overtaken by the evil civilization theme, complete with
several of these blowing horn effects (overlapping once to great effect)
and more angry vocalizations over raw percussion and low brass. This
theme disintegrates appropriately in "Free the Mannaks," with one last
wail of the horn in a panic at about 1:00 into that cue. While few, the
statements of the enslavement material steal the show in
10,000
BC, if only because they're among the score's most original aspects.
The best of the other thematic ideas in the score are summarized in
"10,000 BC/End Credits," which opens with the only truly upbeat
integration of the orchestra and regional vocals. The remainder of the
work contains a few notable action cues but is otherwise somewhat
anonymous. Praised for its striking tone must be the chaotic ensemble
performances of "Terror Birds," though most listeners will find "Mark of
the Hunter" and "Not a God" to be more accessible in their percussive
rhythms (despite being derivative). On the whole,
10,000 BC is an
easy score to program into a consistently satisfying twenty minute
listening experience, with a coherent narrative flow that exceeds the
quality of that of any of these composers' other major works.
If this review was to conclude here,
10,000 BC
would easily be a four star score. It overachieves in general and
greatly enhances several individual scenes. A slight brass error at 2:05
into "10,000 BC/End Credits" is the only performance quibble. When you
step back, the music fits the personality of the film perfectly and is
understandably a crowd-pleaser. Unfortunately, some of the ideas from
the score already fit quite comfortably into Hans Zimmer's
King
Arthur. It's highly likely that the stylish 2004 Zimmer score was
used as a temp track in
10,000 BC, but it is remarkable just how
lazy Kloser and his associates were when adapting these filmmaker wishes
into their own product. The memorably rowdy villain material, along with
Evolet's theme and the seldom employed "A" phrase of the primary theme
may be instrumentally generic and thus seem derivative, but at least
they are technically original. There have been some claims that Evolet's
theme also distinctly references ideas in
King Arthur, but these
are difficult to clearly identify. The same can't be said for the
primary melody and the rhythmic phrase underneath it. Had only one of
these two been so similar to
King Arthur, perhaps a pass could
have been granted. But the fact that both ideas take so thoroughly from
the previous score brings the word "plagiarism" into the equation. The
main theme here is clearly derived from that heard in the breathy vocals
of "Hold the Ice" and "All of Them!" in
King Arthur, the main
melody also represented in that score's song adaptation at the start of
its album, "Tell Me Now." Zimmer expresses the idea twice in his
trademark synthetically-aided sound of immense depth in "All of Them!"
The underlying rhythm in
10,000 BC's main theme stems from a less
often utilized idea in
King Arthur that nonetheless is very
obviously heard in the middle portions of "All of Them!" A detailed
examination will show that there are indeed structural differences
between both ideas in the two themes, usually in the form of phrases
rearranged in various orders (Zimmer doesn't really present them in a
consistent order each time, in part because he references the theme less
frequently in
King Arthur than Kloser and Wanker do in
10,000
BC, another irony in this puzzle), but even these alterations can't
mask the several identical phrases contained within.
So the question is this: Does the use of this arguably
less organized Zimmer material from
King Arthur in
10,000
BC merit equal shame when compared to Tyler Bates' famous plagiarism
of Elliot Goldenthal's
Titus in
300? Some will say yes,
though the studios involved have never made the same fuss about
10,000 BC. Indeed, film score collectors and Zimmer enthusiasts
in particular often dismiss
10,000 BC completely (and sometimes
with disdain and contempt) because of this probable temp track
similarity. But it's difficult to declare outright plagiarism in this
case because what Kloser and Wanker did with the theme causes it to
sound so different in terms of orchestration that its entire demeanor
has been changed. Zimmer's use of the ideas is relegated to the cliche
of new age-like female vocals and his usual bass-heavy pounding of
deliberately overwhelming, masculine power. Kloser and Wanker's version
of those ideas are vastly better developed orchestrally, using vibrant
instrumentation and counterpoint in ways that make Zimmer's theme come
alive with organic, emotional appeal. Not a single one of the trademarks
of Zimmer's writing carry over into the later score. They also take far
more time to develop the themes in a wide range of situational variants
in
10,000 BC than Zimmer did in
King Arthur, further
enhancing its comparative personality. For some, as mentioned before,
identical progressions are too much to overcome (and they will prove
distracting when watching the film), but when you carefully compare the
personality and orchestration of the two, they are sufficiently
disparate to avoid the harshest of plagiarism declarations. It is
ironic, especially given the strength of
King Arthur, that better
enunciated versions of the same theme in
10,000 BC by the usually
taciturn-styled Kloser and Wanker are preferable, but that will
certainly be the case for some. Whether you declare plagiarism or simply
write off this issue because this film was so wretched, it's hard not to
label
10,000 BC as a guilty pleasure of the highest order. As
such, what the heart deems as four-star material is what the brain
protests as being worthy of two (if even that), and a disgruntled three
stars seems like the only logical compromise.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For Harald Kloser reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.56
(in 9 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 2.54
(in 3,748 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert includes a note from Kloser about his involvement with the film and
the contributions of others to the score.
