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| Portman |
Emma: (Rachel Portman) The early 1990's saw a
rebirth of adaptations of famous British authors of centuries ago, and
none was perhaps as influential on screen as Jane Austen. Following
Persuasion,
Sense and Sensibility, and the massive A&E
production of
Pride and Prejudice, the success of
Emma
should come as no surprise. Even Alicia Silverstone's
Clueless
the previous year was a modern adaptation of Austen's "Emma" story,
though it doesn't take a genius to know the intended audience of the
true adaptations. Austen stories all have the same general idea: several
marriages have to be arranged by the end, the leading lady is stubborn
and dislikes social conventions, there's ballroom dancing to be done,
and the main couple of interest takes the entire story to finally admit
their love to one another. For non-Austen fans, these scenarios are just
one alien invasion short of a successful story, and unfortunately for
those non-romantic folks, the scores for these films aren't much better.
Even within the genre, it seems that he music for these pictures can
head in one of two directions: they can use modern orchestral
sensibilities without references to period music, or they can rely
heavily on classical quotations or imitations to try to best capture the
music that would have been heard at the time. Whether it is Carl Davis
or Dario Marianelli, it seems that
Pride and Prejudice has tended
to sway towards the latter. But Patrick Doyle and Rachel Portman
approached the task differently, and Portman in particular was forced
into a more comedic writing role because
Emma remains one of
Austen's more flighty and whimsical escapes. The project would be an
easy assignment for Portman, whose writing is often most effective when
accompanying pure fluff on the screen. Her string and woodwind-dominated
ensembles often define the light romance genre.
With the score for
Emma, we get absolutely
nothing unexpected. You either have to be a Portman fan or an Austen fan
to enjoy this delicately prancing period romance music. The score is
built over Portman's trademark bed of lightly chopping strings, with the
heavier moments utilizing cellos and the comedy cues switching to
violins. The melody lines are carried as usual by clarinet and oboe,
mixed adequately at the forefront. Such usage is not atypical for
Portman, but what usually floats her scores are the lush performances of
lyrical passages by the entire ensemble, and while
Emma hints at
the kind of majesty heard in
Only You and
The Cider House
Rules, that crescendo of beauty is never really obtained. In
"Proposal," the ensemble almost achieves this magnificence, but Portman
restrains herself (maybe unnecessarily) and without fail, the cue
returns to the softer churnings of the strings under solo woodwind.
Portman alternates between two primary themes; the first contains the
title sequences and represents the main character, and the second often
punctuates the comedy of the story. The first theme becomes burdensome
by the end of the score, repeated endlessly in Portman's consistent
woodwind performances. The comedy theme is, as to be expected, the more
vibrant and demanding of the ensemble, allowing the rhythms to perk up
and bounce in "Celery Root" and in the first half of "End Titles." As
heard in
Addicted to Love after
Emma, Portman's humorous
writing carries the interest of the listener far better than her
all-too-similar love themes (you could even extend that statement to
The Road to Wellville if you like). The 4-minute end title cue in
Emma contains all the material you will need from the score (a
lively dance cue in the middle is not her original material), though her
effort was still strong enough to garner her an Academy Award in the
resurrected "Best Comedy Score" category in 1997. Even Portman
collectors will agree, however, that
Emma is far from her best
work, and by no means deserved an Oscar over her other, stronger romance
scores.
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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 28,116 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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