 |
| Wiseman |
Arsène Lupin: (Debbie Wiseman) Despite his
anonymity in the United States, Arsène Lupin is a well-known
character in Europe. Author Maurice Leblanc created Lupin in a series of
twenty novels in the early 1900's, and his popularity since has extended
to various television series, film adaptations, and an anime series
about Lupin's grandson in Japan. The character is a gentleman thief who
serves as France's combination of Batman, Indiana Jones, and James Bond.
A rogue trained by his father as a master of disguise and aristocratic
manners, he (unlike his father) vows not to kill anyone no matter the
circumstances. Falling in love and falling into involvement with
perpetual plans of scheming royalists to re-establish the French
Monarchy, Lupin leads a life of intrigue and extraordinary beauty in a
Gothic environment of shades of black. This 2004 adaptation produced by
the U.K., Italy, and France, was directed by Jean-Paul Salomé and
released initially in France before opening across the world in 2005.
Based on the 1924 novel "The Countess of Cagliostro,"
Arsène
Lupin boasts high production values with its 23-million Euro budget,
and one of the benefits of that budget is an expansive score by British
composer Debbie Wiseman. To see Wiseman's name on advertisements for
Arsène Lupin came as a surprise to many Wiseman collectors,
but certainly not an unpleasant one. Known mostly in England, where she
had received considerable recognition for her work, Wiseman has always
remained outside the sphere of mainstream Hollywood. Her music has often
fallen closer to the realm of similarly-producing Rachel Portman, with
fine melodies often gracing films far less adventuresome and ambitious
as
Arsène Lupin. For her, this project would prove important
not only because of its significant size and scope, a clear precursor to
the magnificent
Lesbian Vampire Killers, but its capability of
feeding a potential franchise of films. In response, she accomplished
what every fan of a rising composer, and especially one narrowing the
gender gap, would hope for: produce a masterpiece.
Wiseman must have looked at this project with much of the
same enthusiasm and heart-pounding anticipation with which Danny Elfman
looked at
Batman, for both scores were so superior to anything in
their budding careers at the time. For Elfman,
Batman would
become the calling card for his work, and
Arsène Lupin
remains highly respected for Wiseman. The success of her score is of
such a grand and magnificent scale that an attempt to convey all of its
assets here would be futile; so remarkable is nearly every aspect of
this score's consolidated presentation on the initial 70-minute album
that an intangible sense of accomplishment begins to define its quality
at the halfway point. Scores that overwhelm the listener with the beauty
of brute power and masterful orchestral distribution are rarely heard in
films of the post-2000 era, with Gabriel Yared's rejected score for
Troy the previous year serving as testimony to that fact. Wiseman
herself only achieved this force again in
Lesbian Vampire Killers
over the following decade. But for a world as Gothic as
Arsène
Lupin, she pulls out all the plugs and delivers a powerhouse of a
score that manages to convey the era of the film (in its instrumentation
and Waltz-like rhythms) while also feeding off of all the menacing
darkness that a shadowy anti-hero deserves. Immensely satisfying bass
resonance, a rambunctious percussion section, and an oversized brass
section produce fanfares of sound that avoid the pitfalls of
over-density through a perpetual knack for high style. The outright
action cues will knock you out in every listen, with "Arsène and
Beaumagnan" featuring extraordinarily aggressive rhythms carried by all
the various brass players and relentlessly propulsive strings; equally
impressive is "Theft of the Crucifix," with a continued assault of brass
layers serving as a backdrop for a duel between a cimbalom and anvil. A
glass harmonica offers mystique. Brass rarely resonates with this kind
of harsh and gripping clarity in film music. Low range piano and bass
strings provide a boiling and relentless bass region also rare in the
era's organic scores, the depth of the soundscape not reliant upon
electronic accompaniment.
The cimbalom is a particularly intriguing element in
Arsène Lupin, for its presence throughout the score roots
the work in both the appropriate time and place, with easily
distinguishable tones as it is mixed at the forefront of each cue in
which it performs. Its most notable contributions exist in the two
pronouncements of the title theme, in both "Arsène Lupin" and
"Secret Passage." Backing a relatively simple brass fanfare for the
title character is a waltz that carries the elegance of the character
while romantic string interludes cover all sides of his personality. All
the while, Wiseman's score squeezes every last drop of glory out of each
minor-key chord progression, often relying on the assistance of a choir
to elevate the fantasy aspect while broadening the soundscape even
further. In "Countess Cagliostro," we hear tragedy of almost a Nino Rota
twist of theme yielding to brass and choral assaults as wicked as John
Barry's opening to
The Lion in Winter. Another intriguing choral
cue is "Le Grand Café," arguably the hidden highlight of the
initial album, with ominous rumblings of timpani, tolling bells, and an
epic choral crescendo over alternating strings and light cymbal rolls.
Interestingly, the mood and style of "Le Grand Café" for some
reason seemed like a perfect match for the subsequent
The Da Vinci
Code at the time, and the same could be said about several other
cues. Another strength of Wiseman's score is her ability to involve
every member of the orchestra without allowing the density to become so
thick that you end up with a John Williams
Star Wars prequel or
Howard Shore
The Lord of the Rings score. An organ opens "The
Blue Lupin" and is overtaken by one of the many ripping rhythms on solo
drums; "Arsène Escapes" gives the snare a significant solo workout.
In "The Needle of Etretat," Wiseman opens with a solo piano motif that
would make any modern thriller film director envious. Softer moments of
Arsène Lupin do exist, but their length in between swelling
string melancholy or angry explosions of brass is often short. Not even
comedy is lost in this work, with a cimbalom and lightly prancing
violins evolving into almost parodies of motifs blown with vicious force
by brass in the rest of the score.
In the end, it's the ferocious performance by the Royal
Philharmonic Orchestra and the Crouch End Festival Chorus that really
bring
Arsène Lupin to life. Wiseman had conducted the group
in concert, and the knowledge of how to orchestrate and conduct the
group herself pays off with a score vibrant with personality at every
turn. It's difficult to find detractions in the score's primary
narrative, though the opening song on the initial album, with its
electric guitar and other obvious period-busting elements, is perhaps
unnecessary despite its adaptation of one of Wiseman's themes. The
strictly period pieces, including the classically inclined "Casino" and
"The Ballroom" don't convey much of the same sense of potentially
impending doom around the corner that most of the score embodies. The
film employs a significant amount of such source-like material, and it
doesn't really mingle with the composer's thematic base. Also of slight
disappointment is the lack of more interpretations of the main theme in
the ambitious action cues throughout the score; that theme is certainly
catchy, and its absence in many of the large-scale action cues is
curious. That said,
Arsène Lupin is a delight to behold in
nearly every cue. Few scores deserve such an unequivocal recommendation.
Very rarely do orchestral action and thriller scores produce such
phenomenal mayhem while sounding genuine and novel in the digital era,
though Dario Marianelli offered roughly the same kind of refreshing take
on the genre in
The Brothers Grimm during the same year. At a
time when American composers, and the establishment that creates many of
them, churns out the schlock that passed for action film music, the
Europeans reminded us that sophistication can indeed coexist with
simple, tonal, kick-ass orchestral force. Patrick Doyle, Alexandre
Desplat, Ennio Morricone, Marianelli, and Wiseman have given film music
listeners plenty to chew on in the mid-2000's, and their American
counterparts could not help but take notice. As mentioned before, parts
of this score seem as though they could have used as a brilliant temp
score for the subsequent
The Da Vinci Code with great effect, and
Hans Zimmer in particular would have been well served giving this
approach a listen. (He didn't, of course, to his and his team's
detriment.)
During its entire existence, the score for
Arsène Lupin has presented availability issues for those
living outside of the core of Western Europe, its two albums long
elusive for Americans in particular. The film debuted in widespread
release first in France in 2004 and then spread across the world in
2005. Notably absent from the movie's release, however, was the United
States, never showing in America in even an arthouse festival. The only
album existing at the time of the film's distribution was a commercial
release from the French branch of EMI, with packaging in French except
for cue titles and notes about the score, both provided by the
English-speaking Wiseman. Unavailable from even online soundtrack
specialty outlets during those years, international listeners could only
purchase the score from either Amazon.com UK or France. Despite the
great length of this 2004 album, Music Box Records presented a
significantly expanded set in 2024 for the twentieth anniversary of the
picture, adding more than an hour of score but subtracting the song. A
fair chunk of this running time consists of padding via source cues and
the impressive variety of original ragtime, polka, and waltz tunes that
mingle at the periphery of the score. But the fuller chronological
ordering of the score proper allows more breathing space to the movie's
narrative, expanding the depth of themes for secondary characters and
the concept of witchcraft. Even the main theme for Lupin and his affair
is exercised with lighter renditions in the first half of the score.
Most astonishing is the immense volume of sizable music that Wiseman
wrote for this film, the only disappointment coming in the artificially
edited end credits music that went unused in the movie. Casual listeners
will be able to appreciate the score's action and melodic highlights,
including the biggest Gothic choral parts, on the shorter product. But
the 2024 set, despite needing some culling to remove source-like
material, provides compelling additions and is worth its cost and, like
Lupin, is destined to slip suddenly into the darkness with only a
pressing of 500 copies. Undoubtedly,
Arsène Lupin should
join
Lesbian Vampire Killers as a necessary representation of
Wiseman's most immense triumphs in any film music collection. While such
music may not be representative of her larger body of work, one cannot
help but marvel at Wiseman's powerful and elegant symphonic ideas for
the Leblanc character and his universe.
***** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
The insert of the 2004 EMI album includes notes from Wiseman in English
and Salomé in French about the film and score. The 2024 Music Box album
contains general notes about the film and score in both English and French.
