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Review of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 (Carter Burwell)

FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:

Buy it... despite the sickening nature of the film if you have long sought to hear Carter Burwell convey his usually challenging, trademark mannerisms in a romantically accessible form.

Avoid it... if you demand the mostly classical route taken by other composers in the prior two sequel scores in the franchise, because there is a fair amount of contemporary flavor that still carries over from Burwell's original 2008 entry.

FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1: (Carter Burwell) Going all the way back to The Exorcist, there has been a special place in cinema for those films capable of causing audience members to experience epileptic seizures and vomiting during viewings in theatres. Joining this elite group is The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1, the fourth installment of the hideous "Twilight" series of books and films, the latter divided into two parts for maximum financial milking of concept enthusiasts in 2011 and 2012. While loyalists maintain that Stephenie Meyer's series of teenage fantasy novels offer good escapism, the cinematic adaptations of them have done little to sway critics and those outside of the concept's core. That latter constituency has made the franchise one of seemingly endless profit, Breaking Dawn - Part 1 launching itself past half a billion dollars in worldwide earnings within a few weeks of release. The insipid plot of this fourth film laboriously strolls through the inevitable honeymoon and consummation of the relationship between the female lead and her vampire squeeze, the results of which are a troublesome pregnancy and a gruesome birthing sequence that not only causes a hybrid baby girl to imprint upon the obnoxious werewolf dude that fulfills the love triangle, but forces the underachieving young mother to become a vampire herself to survive. Most of the redeeming aspects of Breaking Dawn - Part 1 are its controversies, starting with the hacking of partially finished production materials from studio servers by a woman in Argentina (who was sued by the studio after she distributed them) and the dismay of pro-choice groups who see the plot as a subversive anti-abortion message. Best of all are the major media reports that the birthing sequence, complete with flashing strobe-like lights and a fair amount of gore, caused healthy audience members to suffer seizures and spontaneously vomit in the aisles. Aiding the evacuation of their stomachs is Carter Burwell's score, which appropriately twists through its own gut-wrenching moments of suspense for these awful displays on screen. That said, though, Burwell's work for Breaking Dawn - Part 1 is substantially better than what he produced for the original Twilight entry, a byproduct of the marginal maturation of the concept in the interim. He earned these two assignments in the franchise because of existing relationships with the directors that have rotated in and out of the concept since 2008.

While it seemed logical on the surface for Burwell to return to the franchise in the two Breaking Dawn films to wrap the series' musical narrative into a nice package, it was his prior work of significant success with director Bill Condon that ensured this outcome. The original 2008 movie's score was not met with much appreciation from film music collectors; it was a grungy blending of Burwell's trademark chords of challenging tonality and rock-inspired muck meant to growl and brood into the hearts of franchise fans. And that it did, ironically, earning respect from Twilight followers not as thrilled with Alexandre Desplat and Howard Shore's more classically inclined sequel scores. For Breaking Dawn - Part 1, Burwell has managed to accomplish what many had hoped to hear from the start: an effective combination of both sounds. The dark and bass-dwelling moodiness of his original effort, complete with modern and percussive sensibilities, is reprised, led by acoustic guitars and a wealth of players meandering through the depths of the bass region (including fewer than normal violins for an ensemble of this size). The piano has always been the heart and soul of the franchise's scores, utilized somewhat poorly in the first entry but quite well in the sequels. Burwell here finally allows the instrument to truly capture the romantic spirit of the concept. Likewise, the fully symphonic portions of Breaking Dawn - Part 1 also break through Burwell's often cold structures to present several remarkably powerful and accessible statements. The melodies in these passages may still be a bit more obscure than those offered by the composer's peers, but the resonance is finally there to convincingly carry a sense of gravity that concept fans inexplicably apply to these films. The balance between heartwarming romantic interludes and ballsy cues of huffing and puffing is surprisingly well accomplished in Breaking Dawn - Part 1, resulting in a far better listening experience on album than the original Twilight had ever been. The softly tender sincerity of piano, woodwinds, and strings in "Goodbyes," as lightly playful tone as possible in "Hearing the Baby," and the appropriately Latin expression of rock-like harmony in "A Nova Vida" (complete with solo female voice and flute in alluring roles) are about as accessible as anything Burwell has ever written for the screen, despite a continuation of his somewhat awkward meters. The same can be said about the cues of momentous stature, led by the bravado of "A Wolf Stands Up" and even some gothic ensemble vocal accents in "The Venom."

Despite some new, recurring motifs for the main trio of characters in Breaking Dawn - Part 1, there is no single dominant thematic identity in the score. Whereas this issue may become a problem in most contexts, it doesn't seem to adversely affect this entry very much, in part because of the composer's resurrection of his primary theme from the first film. A significant amount of personal meaning went into the application of "Bella's Lullaby" by Burwell in Twilight, and it's quite refreshing to hear it become a significant player in the latter half of Breaking Dawn - Part 1 as the destinies foretold in the first film are finally fulfilled. This theme's performances, usually by piano, culminate in the concluding cue, "Bella Reborn," which states the idea with substantial ensemble support. It's still difficult not to be reminded of the redemptive theme in Conspiracy Theory when hearing parts of this melody, and its staggered layering of piano and optimistic symphonic backing at the end of the cue here definitely reinforce that connection. Outside of these associations, the most obvious development of consistent motifs and techniques in Breaking Dawn - Part 1 is the use of Japanese Taiko drums and their affiliated banging of sticks to represent the werewolves in the franchise. While the consistency of this instrumentation is almost cartoonish at times throughout the score, Burwell's intelligent use of those ideas in the final cues is worth noting for transcending expectations. That instrumentation comes into direct conflict with the two other parts of the triangle in "Jacob Imprints," in which the drums come to a sudden stop during an important moment of realization, and "You Kill Her You Kill Me" (you have to love run-on sentences in cue titles for a film worthy of nothing more than run-on sentences), in which the werewolves' musical identity clashes with the more contemporary electric guitar-led musical persona of the vampire culture. Overall, Breaking Dawn - Part 1 is a score that will pleasantly surprise most film music collectors who were not particularly impressed with the sour personality of Burwell's work for the 2008 original. More importantly, this music finally achieves the arguably superior blend of contemporary and classical tones for its fantasy depictions, surpassing Desplat's The Twilight Saga: New Moon as the most appropriately expressive entry in the franchise. Film music collectors have long wondered when Burwell would finally develop his challenging and trademark structural mannerisms into an effective romantic application that is easy on the ears for longer than just short passages in his work. This score is finally that deliverance, and it's unfortunate that it had to reside in such an intellectually devoid, stomach-churning movie.  ****

TRACK LISTINGS:

Total Time: 53:57

• 1. The Kingdom Where Nobody Dies (1:36) • 2. Cold Feet (2:44) • 3. What You See in the Mirror (3:04) • 4. Wedding Nightmare (1:09) • 5. Wolves on the Beach (1:59) • 6. Goodbyes (2:26) • 7. A Nova Vida (2:57) • 8. The Threshold (1:25) • 9. Pregnant (2:09) • 10. Morte (1:36) • 11. Honeymoon in Eclipse (2:21) • 12. A Wolf Stands Up (3:20) • 13. Two Man Pack (0:32)

• 14. Don't Choose That (2:23) • 15. O Negative (3:37) • 16. Hearing the Baby (2:25) • 17. Playing Wolves (3:15) • 18. Let's Start With Forever (0:59) • 19. It's Renesmee (2:29) • 20. The Venom (1:04) • 21. Hearts Failing (1:13) • 22. Biting (2:25) • 23. Jacob Imprints (1:13) • 24. You Kill Her You Kill Me (2:11) • 25. Bella Reborn (3:05)

NOTES & QUOTES:

The insert includes a list of performers and a note from the composer about the score.

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