: (Basil Poledouris) Given such a paranoid
premise that was extremely controversial for its time, it is difficult
to look back upon
and imagine that a considerable portion
of the American public viewed the 1987 ABC network mini-series as one of
realistic possibilities. Running over seven nights for a mammoth
fourteen hours total,
was a (yet another) "what if" novel
about how individuals (representing the American spirit through their
actions and reactions) would respond to a Soviet invasion and occupation
of the United States. Despite the sensationalism applied to the
reputation of the production at the time,
was never a
film meant to depict the actual military attack and siege to open such a
conflict. Rather, the point of the series was to concentrate on how
average Americans might react to the post-war occupation a full ten
years after the initial invasion. Thus, the series is a character study
rather than a massive political statement or action film. The somber
spirit of the film (including the execution of primary characters and,
not to be forgotten, the entire American legislative body) is tempered
by the slow but determined rebellion of the Americans through their
heartland values and stubborn will. Composer Basil Poledouris was a
veteran of this topic, having provided a stylistically defiant score for
the movie
a few years earlier. He would extend both the
Americana spirit of that score and his collaboration with director
Donald Wrye into
by writing essentially the equivalent of
seven feature films-worth of music. Those seven different chapters of
are slow to develop and don't always offer exact
continuity from one chapter to the next. Thus, in adding to the noted
cinematography of the series, one of Poledouris' objectives was to
provide a score that would maintain an element of consistency between
the chapters. With the production of the film protested and lengthened
due to the scope of its magnitude, Poledouris had enough time in 1987 to
compose an untold number of hours of music, all of which written for and
performed by a full orchestral ensemble. While the title theme of two
minutes in length would be best recognized because of its multiple
appearances throughout the series, Poledouris' score is better
remembered by film score collectors as one of highly personalized and
dramatic character themes for individual threads in the narrative.
Despite Poledouris' reputation for writing some of the
most masculine war-related music in Hollywood between 1982 and 1990,
Amerika should not be confused with that body of work. There are
two or three such militaristic cues in the series, often driven by the
accompaniment of tapping snares, tingling synth samples, and electronic
bass, but do not expect the score to have any relation to the robust,
bombastic Russian material that would eventually become Poledouris'
calling card in
The Hunt for Red October just a couple of years
later. The tone of the military material is just as stark in execution
here as it was in
Red Dawn. Hints of Poledouris' maturing
rhythmic synthetics that debuted in his career at roughly the same time
in
Cherry 2000 can be heard in "Humiliation of Alethea," but not
significantly elsewhere. In fact, Poledouris chose not to provide much
of a Soviet influence on the music whatsoever, restraining his slight
employment of stereotypical Russian note progressions to cues such as
"U.N.S.S.U." and "The Dance Begins," the latter maxing out with a single
barrage of timpani after an eloquent yet ominous string motif. Instead,
Poledouris chose the purely Americana approach for his music, bordering
at times between his own heavily dramatic brass-accompanied woodwind
themes and the occasional John Barry-like expanse of strings in
simplistic performances of melody. Such themes were a staple of
Poledouris' character scores going back as far as
Big Wednesday
in the prior decade. The flow of the music is quite slow, sometimes
anchored by a level of weighty drama that would foreshadow
Les
Miserables but without the immense power of bass or resolution of
focus. Outside of context, the score meanders through its first third
before its gripping material begins to develop, mirroring the slow
evolution of the series. With the overall movement of
Amerika
restrained in pace, cues of more extroverted tempo such as "Ceremony
Montage," featuring one of Poledouris' more inspired string and woodwind
rhythms building in momentum to a fully orchestral statement, are the
highlights. The generic sensitivity of the majority of character themes,
while rotated nicely through the different sections of the orchestra,
doesn't offer a really true or diverse taste of American character, an
odd miss of the target for Poledouris. Rather than instilling his score
with the weight and power of the American spirit in sum, Poledouris
hoped that the smaller, sectional performances of his themes create that
whole through their common threads of decency and patriotism.
Overall, once you've heard Poledouris tackle the sounds
of war, rebellion, and peace with much greater orchestral depth in
subsequent compositions,
Amerika's score, despite the obvious
strengths inherent in its impressive length, doesn't seem to resonate as
well in retrospect. Its adherence to many of the rules he established in
Red Dawn make it a redundant effort in many places as well. The
application of electronics is not as polished at it would be shortly
thereafter for the composer. Apart from the film, the music for
Amerika has never been commercially released, though it has
always been actively sought by Poledouris collectors in search of his
larger orchestral works. A five-minute suite of music from the series
was included on Poledouris' own promotional compilations of the 1990's,
and that material was long redistributed on bootlegged copies of that
album. A 44-minute bootleg with good sound quality but no track names
was leaked at the end of the 1990's and was also a common target for
collectors during its circulation on the secondary market. In the early
2000's, Prometheus Records released several Poledouris scores of the
1980's that had only been released in previous limited editions or never
at all. In August of 2004,
Amerika was one of these scores,
offered as the first of Prometheus' club series of albums in a long time
and adding another half hour of music to the total sum released for this
soundtrack. Despite advance word of
Amerika's official debut on
album an entire year before its release date, the 3,000-copy product,
the 19th of their series, pulled the Prometheus club series out of a
deep coma that had lasted more than a year after the release of John
Barry's uncharacteristic (and for many, unlistenable) score for
The
White Buffalo. A generous and well-balanced product, the 76-minute
Prometheus album features sound quality that is not quite as good as one
would hope for a 1987 recording but nevertheless absolved the earlier
bootlegs of all responsibility and served as the definitive
representation of Poledouris' score despite obviously lacking a wealth
of material that remains unreleased. It stayed available and relatively
affordable in the decade to follow, a solid entry in Poledouris' career
but lacking the thickness and depth that many probably recalled
incorrectly from watching the series. If you had limited funds, the far
wiser buys were Prometheus' previous releases of
Flesh + Blood
and
Cherry 2000, both of which better meeting expectations.
Still, for collectors of the composer, the fine treatment of
Amerika on the 2004 product should not be easily dismissed.
@Amazon.com: CD or
Download
- Score as Written for the Television Series: ****
- Score as Heard on the 1999 Bootleg Albums: ***
- Score as Heard on the 2004 Prometheus Album: ****
- Overall: ****
| Bias Check: |
For Basil Poledouris reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.54
(in 35 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.29
(in 35,992 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
