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| Portman |
The Closer You Get: (Rachel Portman) Fox
Searchlight's 2000 follow-up to their surprising hit
The Full
Monty is a similarly themed arthouse picture, but this time pouring
on the comedy inherent in Irish culture. Four men in a small town in
Ireland meet nightly at a pub to moan over the fact that there isn't a
good selection of women in the area. With few in the town enjoying the
benefits of marriage, the local priest becomes a consistent target of
the film's comedy. The men place an advertisement soliciting American
women for their town's annual St. Martha's Day Dance (and themselves) in
a Miami newspaper and are dismayed when the local women irritatingly
respond by inviting a bunch of Spanish fishermen to the affair. In the
end, the right matches are there all along if only the belligerent folks
of the town would realize it. Becoming a regular in the arthouse scene
during the late 1990's was composer Rachel Portman, who likely would
have won a second Oscar had she scored
The Full Monty instead of
Anne Dudley. Portman's low key work for
The Closer You Get
couldn't compare with her mainstream appeal caused by scores like
The
Cider House Rules, but collectors of the composer's work can't help
but love the spunk that she adds to funky little romantic comedies like
this one. She throws the best of her usual, upbeat, charming, and
small-scale style to help the story along from joke to joke. The small
budget and provincial personality of the film allowed for only a limited
ensemble of players to be hired for this score. Portman employs a
handful of specialty artists, including a majority of woodwinds (she
sure does love those woodwinds), a few guitars, banjo, accordion,
electric bass, a single violin, marimba, and some light band percussion.
There seems to be some synthetic, keyboarded elements in parts, but they
serve only to flesh out the background of a few cues. The bass clarinet
gets the most airtime in the score.
The quirky performing group makes the most of their
instruments through bouncing, likable rhythms that any loyal Portman fan
would enjoy. They're along the same lines of
The Road to
Wellville, but at far less hyperactive and voluminous levels. While
her usual strings are absent, she relies heavily upon the woodwinds and
guitars to produce the basis for each rhythmic movement. With so little
score employed in the film, Portman makes almost constant use of one of
her two themes for
The Closer You Get. Both are provided in
succession in "End Titles Suite," with the funky comedy theme and its
infectious rhythm followed by the more tender character/romance theme.
The primary theme hits you immediately in "The Closer You Get" and
swings with a jazzy movement very typical to Portman's favored chord
progressions. The enthusiasm of the performances of this theme,
extending to even more exuberant presentations in "Hope Springs Eternal"
and "Why Wouldn't They?," are what will cause your butt to wiggle in
your seat. The latter cue uses a bass woodwind and electric bass to kick
the tempo into high gear for electric guitar to cooly explore the theme.
The character theme is easily overshadowed in the score, with acoustic
guitar performances in "Sean & Ella" and "There's a Suit" always
yielding to the more attractive primary theme. The biggest detriment of
the score on album is its brevity. Portman's music on the product only
amounts to roughly fifteen minutes, so to be interested in the album for
its score contents, you have to consider yourself a big fan of her
styles. The majority of running time is occupied by famous rock songs
about relationships that herald back a few decades and arrangements of
traditional Irish pieces (including one arranged and produced by Portman
herself) heard at the actual dance sequence. Mixed in between these
songs are the score tracks, and because these bits and pieces of
material are so short, they are sometimes easy to miss. What you get is
still rewarding, however, so long as you don't expect too much from
it.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
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| Bias Check: |
For Rachel Portman reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.31
(in 30 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.26
(in 28,139 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
