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| Burwell |
The Blind Side: (Carter Burwell) Among the most
surprising box office success stories of 2009 is
The Blind Side,
a small-budget sports movie that tells the tale of a real life success
story on the gridiron of the football field. Director John Lee Hancock
had tested similar territory with 2002's
The Rookie, though the
resoundingly positive work-of-mouth involving Sandra Bullock's
performance in the lead role of
The Blind Side caused the film to
take on a life of its own. Bullock had originally turned down the role
because she was uncomfortable portraying a devout Christian when she
herself was disillusioned with those who preach the faith without living
by its moral guidelines. But she eventually accepted the role at reduced
pay and, supported by an outstanding performance and her husband's
infidelity at the time, became not only a darling of the industry, but
an Academy Award winner as well. In
The Blind Side, her rich
Southern character generously adopts a well-natured, immense black boy
who is academically challenged but extremely protective, the latter
making him quickly accomplished as an offensive lineman in football. The
adopting family, with the help of a hired tutor, assists the boy in
achieving the minimum grades to play college football with a
scholarship, and he eventually succeeds to a degree that he is chosen
high in the NFL draft and plays professionally. The feel good story, as
well as Bullock's appeal, afforded
The Blind Side a delayed but
massive series of earnings many weeks after its debut, eventually
grossing over $300 million. For Hancock's previous two directorial
projects of the decade,
The Rookie and
The Alamo, he had
turned to chameleon film composer Carter Burwell to provide affordable
orchestral and/or contemporary tones, and the equation isn't radically
different in
The Blind Side. Burwell's role in the production was
relatively minor due to the insertion of almost two dozen songs for use
throughout the film, ranging in genre and age considerably. The success
of
The Blind Side must have caught Warner Brothers by enough
surprise for the studio to overlook the usual song compilation
soundtrack companion on album; even after the returns came in, Warner
still didn't produce a soundtrack that could have yielded quite a few
units sold. The studio's music branch did, however, release Burwell's
score with four of the source songs on a short, primarily download-only
album. While nothing in Burwell's 27 minutes on that product will
compete with his most inspired material, it is far from controversial
and makes for a pleasant, though somewhat disjointed and predictable
listening experience that lacks much narrative flow.
Stylistically, Burwell handles
The Blind Side
with predictable methodology but doesn't quite bring all of its
disparate pieces together into a cohesive whole. He hired a limited
orchestral ensemble in Seattle to supplement performances on a number of
acoustic and electric guitars, piano, percussion, and other specialty
soloists, with synthesized atmospherics (in the form of vague choral
tones) sometimes lending added depth as well. Because the film has to
juggle the topics of brash football attitude, hip contemporary style,
and wholesome orchestral melody, the score for
The Blind Side
ends up tackling all three without really excelling at any of them. The
score's most attractive theme exists for the hip, contemporary aspect,
heard immediately in "To Protect His Blind Side" and consisting of
simple descending phrases of easy coolness over ascending electric bass
lines. In several subsequent cues, most notably "The Hang of It,"
Burwell fleshes the idea out with a variety of clapping and tapping
enthusiasm and eventually orchestral backing. The same formula exists in
"Summer Training," the electric guitar beginning to really infuse a
Western flavor with enough twang to represent the South. By "Thank Me
Later," more aggressive percussive rhythms and keyboarding over standard
Western band elements steer the score towards its ballsy material in the
midsection as "The First Game" and "Gridiron Machine" intensify the
hard-ass aspect of the on-field activities. After this extremely harsh
duo of cues, Burwell returns to softer acoustic shades in "Inspired
Play" and "The Art of Recruiting," slightly retro keyboarding and
rhythms reminding somewhat of Marvin Hamlisch's vintage music. The
clapping effects are a bit obnoxious, but these passages are mostly
harmless, looped expressions of the title theme and its occasional
interludes for orchestra. The orchestra really starts to take over in
the score during its final third, naturally, when the feel-good part of
the story's conclusion is really pressed. A touch of Western pizzazz
from
The Hi-Lo Country represents the best of Burwell's usual,
abnormally jumpy progressions. Lovely trumpet solos in the latter half
of "The Light Brigade" and strings and woodwinds in the following two
cues are generic but touching. Most engaging is "My Son Michael," a hint
of
Conspiracy Theory's theme eventually succumbing to gorgeous
piano solos that exude a sense of the Old South. Overall, there's
nothing really wrong with any of these portions of the score, but
Burwell doesn't have much time to overlap these stylistic identities
with much satisfaction. In some ways, it seems like he took the easy
route with the electronic half of the score, because Jerry Goldsmith
definitely proved with
Rudy that these personal growth sports
scores don't have to cater to conventions. Burwell's approach seems to
echo John Debney's rejected work for
Remember the Titans, though,
and at the very least, those techniques suffice.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
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| Bias Check: |
For Carter Burwell reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.84
(in 19 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 2.8
(in 10,924 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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