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Review of Always (John Williams)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... only if you are a John Williams completist and can
appreciate even the composer's most unassuming, understated, and mundane
efforts.
Avoid it... if you expect Williams to conjure any true magic, romance, or other spirit for this film's weighty subject matter, a rare emotional miss for the maestro.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Always: (John Williams) It is rare that either
director Steven Spielberg or composer John Williams produces a total
failure of a film or score, and even more rare when they do it together.
When searching for the bombs in their collaboration, you can quickly
identify 1941 and Always atop the list. For Spielberg,
it's easy to see how his judgment became clouded when eagerly assembling
this film. He had always been fan of the 1944 Spencer Tracy film A
Guy Named Joe, in which Tracy is a pilot who is killed during World
War II and sent back to the world of the living by Heaven to inspire a
younger pilot. The true tragedy, however, is that the younger pilot then
falls in love with the dead pilot's girlfriend and there's nothing Tracy
can do about it. The film was one which Spielberg cites as inspiration
for him to become a filmmaker, and he was surprised on the set of
Jaws to learn that actor Richard Dreyfuss was also a huge fan of
the same film, claiming at the time to have seen it 35 times. Many years
later, they finally got together to work on a remake of that film,
changing the setting from wartime 1940's to 1980's firefighting in
Montana. The planes are much the same, elegantly gliding through the
smoke of the fires to drop their loads of retardant. It is during one of
these runs that Dreyfuss puts out a fire approaching his downed buddy
and, in the process of saving that friend's life, crashes into the
forest. There he encounters an angel who informs him of the task he has
ahead of him before he can ascend to Heaven. That angel is none other
than an all-white clad Audrey Hepburn in her final role before cancer
would claim her life a couple of years later. Unfortunately, with hokey
dialogue, an uncertainty in the tone of the love story, and a complete
lack of genuine urgency in the actions of Dreyfuss, Always became
a film that had no purpose other than to be a remake. It was uniformly
blasted by critics and ignored by audiences. On John Williams' part, the
maestro really didn't do anything to try to correct that doomed path of
Always. Spielberg long sought to use Irving Berlin's classic
song, "Always," in the picture, but he failed to obtain Berlin's
permission after years of prodding. Instead, he chose the 1933 song
"Smoke Gets in your Eyes" as the anchor of the movie.
While Williams did adapt the "Smoke Gets in your Eyes" melody into two score tracks in Always, these were replaced or diminished in the film as to be of no consequence. The spotting of Williams' music is surprisingly minimal overall, several opening scenes existing without it, and Spielberg ultimately rearranged a fair portion of the composer's recordings in the final cut. The score is unobtrusive, uninspired, and uncentered, providing none of the excitement, romance, or magic necessary to elevate the film beyond its mundane confines. While swirling with promise by its conclusion, the work still fails on a surprising number of levels. First, Williams doesn't capture the essence of flight in Always. Old bomber planes have always had a romantic element to how they appear when flying, and Jerry Goldsmith very effectively addressed this emotion in Forever Young a few years later. Williams, however, doesn't evoke any soaring element here, nor does his limited action material stir up any significant amount of excitement in the firefighting and crash sequences. Once the primary character meets his angel, the score takes a back seat in the film, often consisting of only minimalistic contributions from a few meandering strings, celeste, harp, and piano, a lightly ethereal, ambient sound that Williams was just exploring at the time and would return to in Far and Away. To some listeners, this material may sound electronically "new age" for the time. The most notable exception to the understated, non-comedic music is the dread-inducing "Rescue Operation," a cue that doesn't feature Williams' usual high standard of dissonance in such kinds of writing. The lightly droning celeste, wavering string notes that last minutes, and thematic development that is so miniscule that it goes barely noticed occupies much of the playing time. The score is not without themes, but Williams rarely struggles to enunciate his ideas to such an extent as here. The main romance identity exists for the doomed pilot and his lost love, three-note phrases in rising optimistic chords in such a way as to denote trepidation, uncertainty, and lament. As such, the theme struggles to assert itself despite its frequent statements. Its most obvious placements come in the truncated exuberance late in "Saying Goodbye," fuller ensemble performances early in "Pete and Dorinda" and "End Credits," and in its passages of resounding resolution during "Among the Clouds." The main romance theme of Always, sometimes reduced to its first two three-note figures, is far inferior compared to the secondary love theme that takes over for the female lead's character in late cues. Heard in the middle of "The Rescue Operation," the idea flourishes in "Dorinda Solo Flight" (combining with the other love theme) and is treated to a broad extension in the second half of "End Credits." Like many Williams scores, the composer offers one cue of comedic mayhem, its form in this one coming in the affable Americana chasing of "Follow Me." Aside from "Follow Me" and the score's late cues of resolution, most of Always is so understated as to be a non-factor. The music is so soft that you can actually hear a certain amount of studio noise in the latter half of "Seeing Dorinda," including the musicians shuffling around in their seats. For a film with definite supernatural or religious aspects, Always is completely devoid of enticing magic, harrowing loss, or genuine romance. It's difficult to imagine that for Audrey Hepburn's long awaited and assumed-to-be final return to the screen, Williams was unable to provide her heavenly character (or the afterlife more generally) with any kind of redeeming musical identity whatsoever. It's also interesting to compare the approach of this score to A.I. Artificial Intelligence a decade later. Both involve the concepts of love, death, commitment, and rebirth, and whereas Williams treats these ideas with great distance in Always, he would pour on the emotional syrup in A.I. with much better results. The original 1990 album for Always began with an array of light rock and country songs, including two variants of "Smoke Gets in your Eyes," before offering the bulk of Williams' score. A limited, 2021 La-La Land Records album drops the songs and extends the score's main narrative experience out to 56 minutes, though it once again supplies short cues of like character in longer combined tracks, even if that presentation defies the chronology of the score's cues. The additional material is not significant until "End Credits," and a handful of alternate arrangements will be of intellectual interest to those seeking Williams' and Spielberg's troubled attempts to find the right tone of the story. The 80-minute single-CD product is well produced but only extends a mostly lifeless but relaxing Williams' score that is as disappointing as any in that great era for the composer. There are flourishes of romantic depth in the final moments of the work, but they relegate Always to forever remaining a score best represented by a five-minute suite of the two leading themes. **
TRACK LISTINGS:
1990 MCA Album:
Total Time: 68:31
2021 La-La Land Album: Total Time: 79:34
* previously unreleased ** contains previously unreleased music
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert of the 1990 MCA album includes no extra information
about the score. That of the 2021 La-La Land album contains extensive
information about the film, score, and album release, including a list
of performers.
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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from Always are Copyright © 1990, 2021, MCA Records, La-La Land Records and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 6/15/98 and last updated 9/13/21. |
