 |
| Marianelli |
Anna Karenina: (Dario Marianelli) The tragedy in
Leo Tolstoy's 1877 novel is not the death that highlights its later
parts, but the fact that humans have behaved in such insipidly stupid
ways throughout their reign on this planet. With ridiculous societal
mores and a total lack of personal self-control on display in a
historical romance such as the one that exists here, it only makes you
wish that more characters had killed themselves earlier in the plot. The
2012 adaptation of the classic tale of Russian high society comes from
director Joe Wright and Working Title Films, who, along with lead
actress Keira Knightley, developed the popular historical dramas
Pride & Prejudice and
Atonement in the 2000's. While
Anna Karenina was always a depressing topic, Wright emphasizes
the cheap romance novel aspects of the tale rather than truly tackling
enough of the larger civil rights issues involved. Knightley, as the
titular Russian socialite Anna, can't decide whether to dedicate her
affections to the statesman who is her husband or the younger cavalry
officer who sweeps her off her feet, yielding an entire story of bad
timing, hurt feelings, and emotional breakdowns that makes you want to
slap every character upside the face with a large fish. Repeatedly.
Critics and audiences must have agreed to some extent, for
Anna
Karenina did not become the arthouse success of its predecessors
despite continued love from awards bodies. That recognition extended
from Knightley's heralded performance to the challenging score by
Italian composer Dario Marianelli. A veteran of the historical drama
genre and Wright's earlier successes, Marianelli has made a career out
of writing music that bridges the realm of historical anguish and modern
sensibilities, led by his immense achievement for
Agora in 2009.
His more traditional period scores for the Wright films are where he has
earned his gold, however, and while he proves himself capable of
generating very effective source-like music for such assignments, they
have become increasingly difficult to find accessible for modern ears.
Such troubles especially apply to
Anna Karenina, which is clearly
more tailored to its story's time and location than similar scores from
Marianelli. The stage on which
Anna Karenina is conveyed forced
him to treat the topic with even more attention to historical detail in
the music, demanding a combination of Russian folk and classical waltz
techniques that result in one of the composer's less accessible works
despite serving the film well enough to be deemed a success. Regardless
of the composer's keen ability to merge these genres of music,,
Anna
Karenina is a very flawed score when you evaluate it through the
lens of tortured romance.
The commendable aspects of Marianelli's approach to
Anna Karenina is his ability to seemingly effortlessly weave
together the folk and waltz movements into a single identity that really
does set the stage well for the literal and figurative dancing involved
between the characters in the plot. Much of the first half of the score
is dominated by this musical play, prancing with ethnic authenticity
through situations as frivolous and pretentious as those that existed in
Russian socialite society. The orchestra, led by numerous violin solos,
is joined by balalaikas and accordions to provide this flavor,
highlighted by the amusing "She is of the Heavens," which also features
whistling and sung folk elements. While effective, these cues diminish
the weight associated with the mores that squashed civil rights during
that era (perhaps an intentional choice by Marianelli), and, more
importantly, they fail to establish the gravity of importance that the
romantic tug-of-war will inevitably cause this story due to those values
and customs. It takes the score a very long time arrive at some of the
weighty melodrama that Marianelli is accustomed to writing, and even
then, it remains rather tepid and unfitting of such grandiose
aristocratic mechanisms. The composer does utilize a handful of thematic
motifs throughout, most of them waltz-related, but none is specifically
tailored to individual characters. Rather, Marianelli chose to associate
his themes with general emotional conditions, thus allowing them to
weave in and out of otherwise incongruent scenes as a way of tying all
of the characters together in a reflection of the mores themselves. The
primary of these ideas is introduced in "Overture" and continues all the
way through "Curtain," only receiving significant attention from the
whole ensemble as the story approaches its crushing end. Instrumental
solos are once again key to another of Marianelli's works, this time
with the violin, clarinet, and piano at the forefront (you can hear
their interplay best in "Unavoidable"). A lack of either pizzazz or
depth causes this music to flow aimlessly as background accompaniment,
however, never utilizing itself as a true tool of romance. Source-like
cues such as "Can-Can" and "Seriously" don't help the equation, leaving
the whole experience a cold one. Marianelli seemed stuck between the
romantic needs of the characters and the flighty ambience of their
lifestyle, and the score therefore fails to integrate them with much
satisfaction. There are many technical aspects of this work to like (the
intentional degeneration of "Dance With Me" among them), but
Anna
Karenina is a love story at its heart, and this score remains too
frigid and inaccessible to function as it should. If you approach this
music with the expectation that you will hear some of the passion of the
composer's prior period projects, be forewarned; this one is grimly and
coolly capricious.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For Dario Marianelli reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.7
(in 10 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.33
(in 5,087 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
The insert includes a note from the composer about the score.
