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Review of Amerika (Basil Poledouris)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you have an established affinity for Basil Poledouris'
sensitive style of writing for Americana character themes and have no
issue with some stylistic similarities to Red Dawn.
Avoid it... if you are expecting a bombastic, militaristic score with ethnic diversity or the very thick, textured themes you hear in more robust Poledouris efforts.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Amerika: (Basil Poledouris) Given such a paranoid
premise that was extremely controversial for its time, it is difficult
to look back upon Amerika 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, Amerika 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, Amerika 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 Red Dawn a few years earlier. He would extend both the
Americana spirit of that score and his collaboration with director
Donald Wrye into Amerika by writing essentially the equivalent of
seven feature films-worth of music. Those seven different chapters of
Amerika 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.
TRACK LISTINGS:
1999 Bootleg Album:
Total Time: 44:07
2004 Prometheus Album: Total Time: 75:37
NOTES & QUOTES:
The bootlegs feature no uniform packaging. The 2004 Prometheus album
contains extensive information about the score and series. Its packaging is
hand numbered.
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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 Amerika are Copyright © 2004, Bootleg, Prometheus Records and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 9/9/04 and last updated 10/17/11. |
