Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #193
Written 3/26/99, Revised 6/13/08
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Buy it... if you've ever been curious about what the original score
for Nineteen Eighty-Four sounded like before it was rudely
replaced by the studio with pop material by the Eurythmics.
Avoid it... if you expect this score to express the passion and
soul of the film's story, for Dominic Muldowney's music provides all the
basic emotional tools but expresses them without any true power.
Nineteen Eighty-Four: The Music of Oceania:
(Dominic Muldowney) The most definitive adaptation of George Orwell's
classic vision of both post-war England and the potential future under
the likes of Hitler and Stalin came in 1984 itself, when director
Michael Radford sought to completely recreate the exact times and
locations in Orwell's story. With the help of a strong adaptation in the
script and appropriately troubled performances by lead actors John Hurt
and Richard Burton (who died shortly after finishing this film),
Nineteen Eighty-Four became a critical and popular success,
especially outside of Britain. The production's extremely gloomy visuals were among
its other great assets, though the soundtrack has always remained its
most controversial aspect. Virgin films, a fledgling studio at the time,
badly rearranged parts of Radford's work, to such an extent that he
declined a BAFTA nomination for "Best Picture" that year (he would,
though, eventually be nominated for an Oscar for 1995's Il
Postino). The studio's most unforgivable blunder in the opinions of
many was the replacement of most of the original score by young British
composer Dominic Muldowney with pop song alternatives by the group
Eurythmics, which was a leading band at the time for Virgin. The problem
with this move was that Muldowney had been brought into the fold early
in the production due to the film's need for a fair amount of source
music. Muldowney composed and recorded 25 minutes of material that would
be used as that source material, sometimes involving singing by the
cast, during the filming. Upon being impressed by this work, Radford
asked the composer to write the remainder of the score. In the end, most
of that recorded material was removed from the picture by Virgin, and
the score fell into obscurity. There had been a widespread effort in the
early 1980's to experiment with non-traditional rock elements in
situations that didn't naturally suit them (Toto's score for Dune
the same year as Nineteen Eighty-Four was likely the most famous
of these attempts), and, as expected, the odd balance between the
remaining Muldowney score with the synthetic Eurythmics tones causes
consistency problems in the picture.
Granted, Muldowney's career, limited to theatre and
television, may not have merited this scoring assignment; it remains his
highest-profile cinematic work even decades later. And his music is so
lacking of passion that perhaps it is understandable why it was
replaced. But Muldowney still made many smart choices for the score. His
music for the world of Oceania is an intelligent blend of bleak
orchestral tones and militaristic marches, with a few hints of Golden
Age romance thrown in for the purpose of hope. Each of these sections of
the score is adequate in representing the various tones of the story (to
which he wrote; he hadn't seen the finished picture), but, in the end,
an intangible lack of power and passion is what sinks this score.
Balancing its undeniable highlights are performances that don't evoke
the kind of emotions necessary for this tale. The score lacks a soul,
which is a trait that only should apply to the "big brother" half of its
recordings. For that oppressive element, Muldowney wrote a series of
pompous British marches led by layers of trumpets in full fanfare form.
An overarching theme for Oceania is delivered occasionally in this
style, though it also strays into straight, militaristic choral chanting
and, in its more hopeful half, an operatic variant for female soprano
voice. A love theme for the characters of Winston and Julia is
understated and barely registers. The distinctive tones of the specialty
instruments, from Cynthia Millar's ondes martenot (in usual Elmer
Bernstein mode) to mammoth pipe organ, subdued synthesizer, fiddles, and
pennywhistles, all meant to express the extremes of emotion, are
undermixed. Overall, Muldowney's themes and instrumentation aren't why
Nineteen Eighty-Four is a disappointment (given such raw
inspiration). It's the lack of passion in the performance and mixing
that causes this score to bore. Still, it has its moments of beauty, and
thanks to the just-formed Airstrip One Company label, Muldowney's full
54-minute score was made available. With source music that shifts
significantly in volume between traditional score cues, the album can be
difficult to enjoy. The material on paper is strong, though, and begs
for a charged resurrection by an enthusiastic performing group.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
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