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| Goldsmith |
Basic Instinct: (Jerry Goldsmith) The times never
got better for director Paul Verhoeven after the early 1990's, his
popular hits
RoboCop,
Total Recall, and
Basic
Instinct proving far more immensely profitable than his subsequent
efforts. Although his graphic depictions of violence were already well
known by 1992,
Basic Instinct established the director as a man
without reservation in his interest in graphic (and often equally
violent) sex in the mainstream. The controversial Joe Eszterhas script
was a target of claims of discrimination from the gay and lesbian
community before it was even shot, forcing police to hold back
protestors from the San Francisco filming locations during production.
The story is a convoluted murder mystery revolving around a hot,
super-wealthy, bisexual female writer who is suspected of killing her
victims by stabbing them with an ice pick during the peak of sex, an act
described in her novel. In this role is Sharon Stone, who, despite
Total Recall, was a relatively unknown commodity at the time; her
paltry salary of $500,000 on the otherwise high-budget project, along
with the flashing of her vagina during the plot's famous interrogation
scene, launched her to stardom. Michael Douglas plays the troubled
detective attempting to solve the gruesome initial stabbing, his
inability to control his indulgences leading to a torrid affair with not
only his psychologist, but Stone's character as well. This love triangle
is brutally explored in
Basic Instinct, eventually revealing
unexpected connections and leaving the audience hanging with a
tormenting false resolution at the end. While the movie was not
considered high art by critics (the stylistic connections to Alfred
Hitchcock's
Vertigo are shameless), it defied the protests and
became a sensation that hauled in $350 million, making it one of the
most successful cinematic ventures of the entire decade. One of the few
aspects of the film to receive universal praise was Jerry Goldsmith's
score, a triumph of orgasmic suspense that led to Academy Award and
Golden Globe nominations for the veteran.
It was an admittedly arduous and difficult assignment for
Goldsmith, not only because Verhoeven is a challenging director to work
with, but due to the story's unusual blend of sensuality and chilly
atmosphere. There is no love on display in a positive sense in
Basic
Instinct, making the sex aspect difficult to adhere to the noir-like
suspense that otherwise dominates. An ice-cold allure is precisely what
Basic Instinct required in its music, and Goldsmith admirably
succeeded in defining that oddly balanced soundscape. He also managed to
capture the musical essence of an orgasm as well, perhaps more
orchestrally graphic than ever heard before. His ensemble is familiar to
his collectors, building off of the noir ambience of the National
Philharmonic Orchestra and utilizing his usual array of synthesizers,
performed live with the orchestra, on top of it to accentuate the
contemporary and chilly personality of the thriller. The dangerous
seduction embodied by the score represents the best entry in its
sub-genre since John Barry's
Body Heat, terrifying in its
intelligent use of lighter instrumental tones to foreshadow unspeakable
perversions. Hearing mystifying strings, woodwinds, keyboarding, harp,
and piano as representatives of sexual tension beckons you to come
closer while simultaneously trying to warn you that an ice pick in your
eye socket is just around the corner. The string section carries the
burden of the work, whimsically weaving through every cue of the score
in high, ghostly tones suitable for a romantic haunted house story,
perhaps an appropriate influence of Bernard Herrmann in suggesting not
only a foggy reality, but the city of San Francisco as well. Of equal
ominous innocence is the variety of woodwind tones, some of them
actually keyboarded samples (as clearly evident at the end of "Catherine
& Roxy") to accentuate their eeriness. An aggressively hammered piano in
the extremely low ranges adds a distinction to this score that serves to
illuminate the danger and suspense of the eroticism. Reverberating sound
effects bounce around in the soundscape as a perfect representation of
the mind-numbing (and drunken) confusion felt by Douglas' character and,
by relation, the audience.
Sinister, sensual, dark, foreboding, and passionate are
the electronic effects all at once in
Basic Instinct, the bubbly,
fluid, and falsely hopeful aspect of a hazy and confusing experience
foreshadowing channel-sparring sounds heard with greater volume in
The Shadow a few years later. A few strikingly bold and powerful
action sequences in
Basic Instinct remind of Goldsmith's previous
collaboration with Verhoeven,
Total Recall, allowing brass and
drum pat hits to explode with angry force. When the gravity of the
film's weight begins to collapse in on Douglas' character, Goldsmith
increasingly applies extremely heavy, deep bass strings that also
establish the dread of the sex scenes. In fact, the most momentous
crescendos of fear in this score are almost entirely string-based.
Thematically,
Basic Instinct is a rich tapestry of three
constantly battling major themes, often overlapped or finishing each
others' statements. All built upon melodramatic and sometimes shared
minor key structures, these themes are so prevalent that it's
challenging to find any extended sequence without one of them. The
primary theme is a sultry descending and ascending figure that blows in
the wind with little tethering, an ambiguous expression of false romance
heard in concert form during the opening and closing titles. While this
theme is the most famous representation of the score, adapted in various
guises throughout the picture, Goldsmith's two secondary ideas for
Basic Instinct are where the real action is happening. The first
of these themes is the "pursuit" or "travelling" motif, an elegant if
not slightly urgent idea that stretches across more than an octave in
its dynamic and futile search for resolution. After being heard first in
the middle of "Catherine & Roxy" on high strings and with an accelerated
pace and depth in the opening minutes of "Night Life," Goldsmith saves
the most truly noir-like performance for trumpet at the outset of
"Unending Story," and that cue's bridge to the "End Credits" contains a
monumental fanfare-like expression of its tragic noir inclinations.
Structurally, the twists and turns of this theme make it the strongest
identity in the movie, and it's interesting to ponder how it could have
been manipulated to serve as the primary theme as well.
Often under the top two themes is the other identity in
Basic Instinct, a rumbling bass figure of eight to ten notes
usually performed on piano to represent the suspense of the story. Its
use underneath the pursuit motif increases as the score progresses,
culminating in an impressively forced merging late in "She's Really
Sick." Likewise late in the picture, it begins to interrupt the flow of
the main theme as well, "It Won't Sell" and "Unending Story" both
exhibiting this encroachment. The suspense theme eventually prevails
completely in the last moments of the film, supplanting the main theme
in a full ensemble performance during the strikes at the conclusion of
"An Unending Story." A few lesser motifs also exist in the score,
highlighted by the literal stabbing motif for the killing scenes and
their suggested equivalents. Stone's character receives a rather
uncertain, descending minor-third pair that can be supplied in any
situation in the score. Goldsmith also seemingly plays an in-joke in
"Pillow Talk," reprising the tone and a phrase of the music heard in an
early scene in
Total Recall involving Stone in bed. The sex and
orgasm motifs in this score are the last piece of the puzzle but
obviously very memorable ones. Pulsating strings reaching for painful
rhythmic crescendos to accompany the graphic sex scenes with remarkable
accuracy, the rapturous tempos for these scenes are almost a bit too
amusing to appreciate outside of context. Overall,
Basic Instinct
is a score with too many built-in contradictions to describe, a perfect
but sometimes overwrought accompaniment for the unusual behavior in the
story. It's easy to imagine that Goldsmith took weeks on end to finally
nail down the right themes for the picture. The battle between innocent
violin and woodwind tones and the deep bass strings and thunderous piano
is perpetual, as is the dissonance punctuating the start of each measure
during the sex scenes. While the title theme and the material for those
raunchy depictions of depravity are the most lasting highlights of this
soundtrack, the secondary themes are just as compelling and complete the
narrative of the film wonderfully. The musical arc in
Basic
Instinct is extremely clever, creating an emotional roller coaster
with all the twists and turns of the film, especially by the time
Goldsmith leaves untrusting listeners perplexed by a concluding track
that is desperate and unfinished. Another general asset of the score is
a simply stunning recording, the crystal clear sound quality a precursor
to the wet ambience that defined the composer's scores of the late
1990's.
While fans of the score have always claimed that the
complete recording has not been commercially released (going so far as
to unnecessarily worship amateurish double-CD bootlegs of the music),
the available products are more than sufficient. The Varèse
Sarabande album released at the time of the film's debut offers ten
tracks totaling over 45 minutes that serves as an adequate
representation of Goldsmith's various thematic ideas and instrumental
motifs. A dozen years later, the Prometheus label released an expanded
album for
Basic Instinct that presents the bulk of Goldsmith's
effort in film order, advertising itself as complete but confusing some
fans due to some rearrangement of material that happened in the final
editing phase of the movie's creation (the director shifted around the
music heard in "First Victim" for multiple applications). In 2015,
Quartet Records rearranged this fuller selection another time, including
the original album presentation and alternate recordings for the R-rated
version of the movie on a second CD. While casual fans could probably
remain content with the original 1992 album, any significant Goldsmith
collector should definitely investigate either of the longer albums. As
time has passed,
Basic Instinct has proven to be an even more
fascinating and unique work in Goldsmith's career, and while the
material absent from the original album is not earth-shattering outside
of the massive pursuit theme insertion at the end of "An Unending Story"
on the longer albums, it is still as interesting and top notch as the
music originally released. The shorter filler cues for the film are just
as eerie and tense as the rest, and they expand upon the mood of the
original 45 minutes with numerous impressive ambient sequences.
Highlights on top of the longer of "An Unending Story" on the expanded
albums are "Catherine & Roxy" and "Don't Smoke" (with great electronic
work performing the pursuit theme), "Beth & Nick" (a pivotal and
disturbing cue), a slightly longer alternate version of the first
killing cue for the unrated cut of the scene, the elegant piano of "It's
Won't Sell," and the "That's Real Music" source cue for the clip from
the movie
Hellraiser on a television seen in the background of a
scene (there's more 1950's horror in this cue than Christopher Young's
tone). Overall, any album is a winning presentation of
Basic
Instinct, though the expanded offerings do sustain their length
quite well. As disturbing as this score can be when you match the music
to the visuals, it's a solid solo listening experience in the suspense
department. Music for graphic sex scenes and vaginal flashes has never
been the same.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.29
(in 113 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.31
(in 143,742 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert of the original 1992 album includes a note from the director.
The 2004 and 2015 albums' inserts feature detailed information about the film
and score.
