Filmtracks: Black Widow (Lorne Balfe)

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Written 8/29/21

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Buy it... if you desire conceptual highlights from an ambitious and often enjoyable score by Lorne Balfe, whose commendable application of Russian tones is matched by a reverence for vintage Media Ventures action flair.

Avoid it... if you expect the poorly arranged album presentation to correlate with what you heard in the film.

Balfe

Black Widow: (Lorne Balfe) Never mind that the titular character perished in a fall during a previous movie in this franchise, for the Marvel Cinematic Universe exists to insert solo character movies wherever convenient in their larger narrative. The Black Widow character proved more popular with audiences than Disney and Marvel had anticipated, leading to more appearances for actress Scarlett Johansson in these films than planned and culminating in 2021's solo debut, Black Widow. Targeted for a summer 2020 release, the film was delayed more than a year to wait out the pandemic and take its chances in theatres. Disney ultimately streamed the film simultaneously, however, prompting Johansson to sue the studio for using a release tactic that harmed her profits from the venture. Rather than vanquishing enemies with lawyers in the story of Black Widow, she instead prevails using her fists and feet, revealing for audiences her origins story and establishing the character's sister for inclusion in additional Marvel adaptations in the future. Oddly like The Incredibles, she's part of a super-hero family of lore in Soviet Russia and beyond, and her mission is to free her loved ones while taking down the program that steals girls to develop them into Black Widow female assassins. Not surprisingly, the film was an immense popular success despite consisting of a series of rather stock action sequences. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has enjoyed increasingly consistent development of musical themes in its soundtracks, most of that positive outcome owing to Alan Silvestri's work on the ensemble cast films. The spin-off movies have often allowed a variety of other composers to dabble in this pool of opportunity, and director Cate Shortland landed veteran Remote Control Productions graduate Lorne Balfe for his first Marvel venture, though purists are quick to point out that the composer had contributed additional music to the wretched, Hans Zimmer-produced Iron Man score of 2008 that had primary credit go to Ramin Djawadi. Balfe's career had ascended in the late 2010's to the extent that his work is more symphonically and melodically satisfying than his earlier jam sessions with Zimmer's gang. There is an increasing amount of intelligence in his music around the start of the 2020's, Black Widow one such notable improvement.

Early reports from 2020 indicated that Balfe had little time to write Black Widow, as he had been a relatively late replacement for Alexandre Desplat. Film score enthusiasts were largely disappointed by this switch, for it was the second time in recent years (after Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) that Desplat had departed a major pop-culture franchise late in the production process. Desplat refused to reveal publicly why he left the project, and Balfe meanwhile claimed to have ample time to write for the score despite a condensed schedule that saw his music recorded as the final sessions in London before the pandemic lockdown prevented full ensembles in the room at once. The delay of the movie ultimately allowed extensive tinkering with those recordings for much of a year, though the work remains largely organic. He managed to record with a 118-member orchestra and 60-voice choir slanted towards male tones, adding electronic embellishments and the typical Remote Control sound of electric strings. The trailer for the movie had utilized a Russian-styled adaptation of Silvestri's franchise theme to popular effect, and Balfe opted to continue this technique despite intentionally avoiding stereotypical Russian instruments like the balalaika. Instead, the composer adopted vintage Zimmer methods for generating Russian tones, making Black Widow something of a love letter at times to Zimmer's Media Ventures era of masculine Eastern European muscle, highlighted by The Peacemaker. The male choir is key to resurrecting this sound, though Balfe also confessed to striving for basing the melodic elements off of Russian folk music from circa 1910, studying the works of Prokoviev and Stravinsky for this assignment despite no formal classical training. Though Balfe does access chord progressions associated with Russian music generally, he doesn't necessarily succeed to the extent that James Horner did at the task, but the result is still reasonably effective. Most of the score for Black Widow in the film doesn't really espouse a Russian influence, and with Balfe replacing the use of a balalaika with an acoustic guitar, there's almost a Latin flavor to some passages. Perhaps most importantly, the score comes across as independent of the Silvestri mannerisms and character for the remainder of the franchise, though Balfe was acutely aware of the concept's existing music when devising his own themes.

Listeners expecting to hear preexisting franchise themes in Black Widow will be pleased with Balfe's care here; he has proven himself conscientious in applying concept themes in other franchise assignments, and that consideration persists here. While his tone is certainly much different from Silvestri's, he supplies a hint of the main Avengers theme early in the action of "The Descent" before a full payoff as Natasha Romanoff takes off in a jet to rescue the group at the end of the film. More intriguingly, he was cognizant of the prior Black Widow motif that had featured in several prior films, especially Avengers: Endgame. This idea (a four-note phrase followed by a three-note resolution) was applied by Balfe a few times in Black Widow, but not with particular prominence compared to his new ideas. In fact, don't expect to find this material featured on the album release for the score, a point of contention about the music more generally. Balfe operates much like Zimmer in that he writes concept suites that may or may not make the film in some edit. Typically, what you hear on screen is one of many variants on these initial ideas, and with the concept suites often comprising the bulk of the soundtrack albums, fans will have difficulty matching what they hear on album with what accompanies the film. This issue is especially pronounced with Balfe's duo of The Tomorrow War and Black Widow, the latter album containing extensive music not heard in a similar form in the movie while important cues and mixes from the film are absent from the album. As such, this review will touch mostly upon what Balfe chose to include on the album, but be aware that about half the music on that product (and many of its best highlights) are not utilized in the picture. Most prominent among these are the various vocalized renditions of folk-inspired themes for the Romanoff character. For both these passages and those better matched with the Red Army, Balfe generated Russian lyrics inspired by 19th Century Russian poets. The resulting solo female vocals on the album are as intimate as they are orphaned from the film, supplying interest if not slight bafflement as to their quantity. Balfe's thematic development in Black Widow is ambitious but, in true Balfe form, not always transparent. His ideas tend to be strong but poorly enunciated over the course of a full score, Black Widow no exception.

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A trio of surprisingly pretty, Russian-inspired themes represent the family at the heart of Black Widow, with offshoots sometimes exploring variants that don't realize any satisfying end. Romanoff herself receives a folk tune that inspires most of the melodic variants of an intimate nature. Her sister, Yelena Belova, receives another idea saturated with stereotypical Russian chord progressions, and the two together receive a less regionally or time-specific idea to represent their bittersweet relationship. On top of this core for the protagonists, the film receives something of a generic three-note action motif representing the sisters' action exploits, and the duo of villains, Dreykov and his daughter, a.k.a. Taskmaster, also feature separate and related themes. The main Romanoff/Black Widow theme is summarized in all of "Natasha's Lullaby," where acoustic guitar and choir join a prominent female vocalist for a performance not heard on screen. It strains at the end of "Last Glimmer" and is hinted throughout "You Don't Know Me" before another suite-like arrangement in "Natasha's Fragments" gives the idea its occasional Latin feel. The theme's rising chords structures inform the end of "I Can't Save Us" and string counterpoint to the villain theme returns at the end of "Red Rising." Faint chords at the start of "The Betrayed" build to a fuller choral outburst later in the cue. The idea transitions to action mode in "The Descent," fighting the Taskmaster motif by its climax. Offered in part during the end credits is "Natasha Soars," the Black Widow theme in full anthemic brass mode over hyperactive strings and woodwinds with the same bright enthusiasm as Zimmer's Wonder Woman 1984. The album diminishes the theme after that, its chords meandering through the start and end of "Into the Past" and strained string fragments over piano presenting echoes of the idea in "Broken Free," only the theme's rhythmic phrasing surviving the cue. A vocalized variant of the original lullaby occupies "Last Love," its more lyrical secondary phrases a nice touch. Similar treatment extends to "A Calling," albeit in an extremely sparse and potentially abrasive rendering. This theme, on the whole, is largely underplayed by Balfe, who opts not to express all-out statements for the full ensemble outside of a few scenes. He may make the argument that this hesitant thematic reveal is befitting for an origins film, but it also causes continuity issues with the narrative arc of the score.

The most alluring moments of Black Widow's score come in the themes for Yelena Belova and the sisters together. Belova's theme is summarized during all of "Yelena Belova" and struggles to assert itself elsewhere. It's vague at 1:47 into "The Pursuit" and is bogged down against the film's main action motif at 0:39 into "The First Bite is the Deepest." It is conveyed with slight agony at the start of "The Betrayed" and finally breaks through at 0:42 into "A Sister Says Goodbye," where it is featured on softer piano and choir, building to a long crescendo before fading into a music box-like piano effect to close out the cue. The most beautiful idea in Black Widow represents the sisters' relationship, mimicking the best dramatic material Balfe has conveyed. The domain of the piano, this idea debuts at 1:47 into "Fireflies" and stews in the middle of "Last Glimmer," but it really shines in the piano and supporting performances in "Blood Ties" and at 0:25 into "Faces to the Sun," where its choral and piano tones offer the score's upmost redemption. Balfe would have been best served dropping the Belova theme and instead concentrate on just the one family theme; while it doesn't espouse the same Russian tilt, the theme is the score's most appealing melody. On the darker side of the score, Balfe treats the sisters' action exploits with a surprisingly simplistic and brutal three-note phrase hovering around key, introduced at 0:45 and 1:30 into the suite-like "Latrodectus." It continues throughout "The First Bite is the Deepest," its biggest performance at 1:58. The idea fights against a variety of fluttering action lines at 0:41 into "Whirlwind" and is a staple of "Red Rising." The motif stomps through the middle of "The Descent" and exits the album at 2:33 into "Into the Past" over hefty synthetic percussion. As tool of action, the motif is effective but rather dumb; Balfe could have just as easily applied the preexisting theme for the character in the same role and not lost much of the same malleability. Of all the themes in Black Widow, none is exercised through as many variations as that of the villain, Dreykov. His identity is conveniently summarized throughout the suite, "Dreykov," and is provided the obligatory solo electric cello in the middle of "From the Shadows." The theme is whipped into action in the latter half of "Whirlwind" and shifts to big, choral menace at 0:59 into "Arise." It's ominous early in "I Can't Save Us," pounds away with brass layers late in "Red Rising," and slips past the main lullaby theme in "Into the Past." It's not flashy, but it works.

Connected to Dreykov's theme in Black Widow is the score's final identity, one for Taskmaster. Though understandably a simplistic variant of Dreykov's theme by design, the chopping rhythmic formations of this motif do yield a distinct theme at 0:54 into "From the Shadows" for the character. The idea returns in the middle of "The Betrayed" and is immersed in action at 1:24 into "The Descent." Despite all these themes, Balfe struggles to arrange them into a satisfying narrative. A cue like "Hand in Hand" does not use its placement early in the film to extend any of the score's themes effectively, hints of each of the sisters' themes gurgling in the background without much purpose. Some viewers may find the sisters' theme, as brief as it may be in the score as a whole, to be the primary melody of Black Widow, with the idea elegantly opening and closing the film in "Fireflies" and "Faces to the Sun." Most listeners will likely forgive the narrative's shortcomings by latching onto specific, highly impressive cues that expose some of the best writing of Balfe's career. The duo of "Whirlwind" and "Natasha Soars" offer spectacular lines of action in their recordings, the latter cue suffering from a really irritating electronic conclusion but remaining a major attraction overall. Some will gravitate towards the dynamic solo vocals and choral ensembles, the latter ranging from Media Ventures appreciation to extremely abrasive female chanting at the end of "Arise." For those wanting the most obvious tribute to the Zimmer Media Ventures era of action, look no further than the relentlessly chopping "The First Bite is the Deepest." Ultimately, however, Black Widow suffers even more than The Tomorrow War from a substandard arrangement of its album contents. Upwards of half of the music included on the album was not utilized in the film in even a similar mix or at all. (Sadly, much of the score's least tolerable action material did actually make the film.) Someone seeking to reconstruct the film's memorable end credits sequence must combine parts of "Natasha Soars," "Blood Ties," "From the Shadows," and "Yelena Belova." As mentioned before, some important cues are missing from the album, including the rendition of Balfe's main Black Widow theme leading up to his usage of Silvestri's overarching Avengers theme. The score's narrative on screen is hindered by songs in a few places as well, a Nirvana cover during the opening credits a missed opportunity. In the end, this ambitious and often enjoyable score is potentially defeated by its inability to allow its themes to soar, leaving you with a series of conceptual highlights on a frustratingly arranged album. @Amazon.com: CD or Download

Music as Written for the Film: ****
Music as Heard on Album: ***
Overall: ****

Bias Check:

For Lorne Balfe reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.81 (in 31 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 2.86 (in 23,528 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.

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