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| Young |
Bless the Child: (Christopher Young) It is not often that
films have to deal with real life timing when considering their production
schedules, but the date January 1, 2000 had a special significance for the
plethora of films dealing with primitive fears involving religious turmoil and,
potentially, the end of the world. The best known entry in this predictable stock
was
End of Days, which was timed perfectly to dwell upon ridiculous Y2K
fears. And then there was
Bless the Child, the Kim Basinger and Jimmy
Smits film that had a remarkably identical plot to
End of Days but was
plagued by a different kind of disaster. The Paramount production was re-written,
re-shot, and re-edited extensively, pushing its release date well into 2000 and
thus rendering the film somewhat moot. Not surprisingly, the incredibly bad
timing that resulted from the delay, as well as the rehashing of the familiar,
old gateway-to-hell scenario, led the film down the forgotten path to oblivion.
Such cinematic floundering was no new experience for composer Christopher Young,
who would often write noteworthy horror music for films that were destined to hit
a brick wall and fail miserably at the box office. Unfortunately,
Bless the
Child was such a case once again, with Young hired to provide his classic
horror sensibilities to a film that certainly didn't deserve such orchestral
majesty and choral ruckus. This score in particular was reassuring to enthusiasts
of Young's horror music, because at the turn of the century, Young was leaving
this mode of music behind and dabbling in more electric organ-laced jazz for his
newly discovered genre of arthouse drama. So despite the similarities that the
music for
Bless the Child shares with a number of previous Young horror
scores, it was important for fans to know that the horror master could conjure a
massive effort for the genre whenever necessary, regardless of the composer's
experimentation with different, less ominous topics. Of course, Young would make
the horror and suspense genres a staple of his later 2000's production, but the
menacing choral style of
Bless the Child still stands as a distinct entry
in the composer's career and, not surprisingly, remains a favorite for many of
his listeners.
The score for
Bless the Child does not feature the same
awe-inspiring thematic development as Young's work for
Hellraiser II or
The Fly II, which established him as a leader in the area of overwhelming,
Gothic themes. There are several twenty-second blasts of harmonious terror in
Bless the Child, but never the sustained material of highly listenable
resonance that remains famous in Young's best works. On the other hand, he does
maintain a more consistent underscore for
Bless the Child, alternating
between strong, highly effective dissonance and traditional choral chants. The
deep male chants perform a simplistic "rowing motif" (they sound as though they
could come right out of a Viking film, with a forceful, throaty edge to their
performance). As expected, there are some lighter, upper range choral
performances for moments of religious awe. But Young doesn't back them up with
the full pounding of the orchestra as he had in other scores. There is no
cymbal-crashing exclamation point on the measures, and at times the bass strings
provide less of the deep accompaniment than the score could have used. The
performers of the London Metropolitan Orchestra don't seem to flourish with the
same lavish enthusiasm that performers have exhibited in similar recordings of
Young's horror music. The result of the occasionally less than stellar orchestral
sound (and this may be due to any one of many factors, including diminished group
size) is that the score falls back into a more predictable mode of presentation.
Young's horror music always walks that fine between cliche and innovation, a
standard he created largely by himself in the late 1980's, and without an
overwhelming performance, the score can leave you wanting more power behind the
familiar motifs. The only truly hindering motif is a light, cascading one for
percussion that is straight from Alan Silvestri's
Back to the Future, but
that's more likely a coincidence more than anything else. A boy soprano also
brings back memories of John Debney's
End of Days. Young counters with the
use of a very memorable Middle Eastern woodwind effect to enhance the biblical
weight of the religious implications on screen. And the underscore, while
dissonant in many sections, is sufficiently interesting to keep the listener
going. If Young hadn't already explored this score's foundations before with more
tantalizing results,
Bless the Child would be a four-star effort.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
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| Bias Check: |
For Christopher Young reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.48
(in 27 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.17
(in 10,914 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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