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| Horner |
Enemy at the Gates: (James Horner) Director
Jean-Jacques Annaud's career is littered with historical dramas that
attempt to tell personal tales against the backdrop of difficult, true
circumstances. His broad depictions of the battle of Stalingrad in World
War II are quite effective in realizing the scope of the desperate fight
between Germany and Russia on the Eastern front, though his insistence
in rooting the picture in an ongoing duel between two sharp shooters and
a love triangle on the Russian side caused an inevitably depressing
conclusion reached only after sour action and character scenes that
failed, for many critics and audiences, to engage the viewer. The film's
grim portrayal of the horrors of Stalingrad is no picnic, and neither is
James Horner's score. Horner has handled his fair share of serious,
dramatic work for the war genre in his career, though his efforts in the
several years prior to
Enemy at the Gates had tended to sway
closer to the realm of heartfelt family affairs. In the previous year,
The Perfect Storm was devoid of any kind of epic, historical
scope and
How the Grinch Stole Christmas was dismissed as merely
average by many of Horner's collectors, and for good reason. With
Enemy at the Gates in 2001, however, Horner collaborated with
Annaud once again (their early
The Name of the Rose is still a
curiosity for both men) to resurrect a sense of momentum and brutality
not heard since
Courage Under Fire. While his war epics are no
doubt a tougher listening experience for casual Horner fans,
Enemy at
the Gates is a score of such an enormous magnitude that it may be of
interest simply because of the sheer volume of massive sound that
prevails for much of its length. As a companion to a film detailing the
horrors of war, it is an appropriately charged effort of immense
orchestral intensity, choral outbursts, and very few moments of respite
from a perpetually turbulent atmosphere. Ultimately, though, the score
would be best known for the criticism aimed at Horner due to his many
seemingly obvious "borrowings" from both classical composers and, to an
even greater degree, his own works.
The general tone of
Enemy at the Gates is
impressive in its alternation between desperate solitude and terrifying
battle, shaking the walls with volumes of marching bombast not heard
many times in his career. At the same time, though, Horner has seemingly
let the romanticism of pride and love slip through the cracks in this
work. With such a bittersweet romantic side story, the film caused many
to expect the use of a melodramatic theme of superb elegance. Indeed, in
contrast to the countless cues of suspense or outright war, Horner does
provide a meandering and thoughtful love theme for the Tania character
in
Enemy at the Gates, but it encompasses so little dedicated
time in the first half of the score that it easily becomes washed away.
The mass majority of this score toils with the frightful environment of
the battlefield, and, more specifically, Horner makes extensive use of
his curling four-note motif from many scores of the past to signal
danger. For
Enemy at the Gates, Horner takes this motif and
blasts it repeatedly, almost with unrelenting malice, until you reach
such a point that you cannot really tolerate it anymore. The tension in
the string section of the orchestra is domineering, often building to
lengthy crescendos of loud and unwavering dissonance. The suspense in
this score is a different variation of that which made the just previous
Thirteen Days by Trevor Jones such an effective score. In that
Jones work, there is a distinct sense of nobility throughout its unease.
In
Enemy at the Gates, Horner drops any notion of hope and
produces a brooding and dark score of despair. Appropriate for the story
it is, but it's extremely unsettling on the album. This sense of gravity
makes Horner's more romantically elegant scores (such as
Legends of
the Fall) very attractive, but without any sense of sweeping beauty,
the music here is devoid of any alluring characteristic. Even in the more
lovely performances of Tania's theme, as in "Betrayal," Horner overlays
the danger motif continuously, and the slight discord in his string
layers continues an environment of marginal dissonance that keeps the
score rooted in despair.
Horner does manage to tie up one loose end from twelve
years prior in his career, even though that topic remains one of
controversy. For a long time, film music fans were baffled by the march
at the beginning and end of his 1988 flop
Red Heat, which
featured an adult male and female chorus performing a Russian anthem
that sounded much unlike anything else that Horner had recorded since.
In short, the reason for this unlikely style was because the piece was
pulled by Horner from Sergey Prokofiev's "The Philosophers." That oddity
is expanded upon significantly in
Enemy at the Gates, with
multiple outbursts of a similar Russian choral element over the same the
two-note alternations of the bass strings that accompanied the theme's
usage in
Red Heat. These forceful, fully choral cues in
Enemy
at the Gates are among the very best of its war-torn material. The
lengthy "The River Crossing to Stalingrad" introduces these wordless
performances with resolve, and "Vassili's Fame Spreads" includes a
momentous choral outburst with pounding timpani and resounding power. By
the more romantic, final cues in the film, starting with "Betrayal," the
chorus becomes a beautiful, humming accompaniment to the orchestra. The
highlight of the album's presentation of the score is its final three
tracks. The simple and yet elegant romanticism of love of person and
country is sweeping in these performances. Granted, some of it is
repetitive within the score; the use of Tania's theme in those
conclusive cues is almost unceasing, with little in the way of
redemptive variations to distinguish one final flourish from the
remainder of the similar performances. Even with this romance taking
shape late in the score, however, Horner never ceases to remind you of
the unease of the story by leaving very few bars of this material
completely harmonious. The end of the album simply fades away into a
dreary and bleak darkness, much the antithesis of
Glory's
prideful ending. The last bars of
Enemy at the Gates make you
feel as though you're about to walk into a Russian winter without hope
or future, bringing the album around in a full circle.
Horner's somewhat predictable work for
Enemy at the
Gates has proven to satisfy those who appreciate nearly everything
the composer has written. There is definitely a reason for that appeal,
though, that also happens to strike down the work for many other
listeners. It is a score that is so badly tainted by its blatant re-use
issues that even some casual Horner fans may find themselves revisiting
the score only infrequently. The sequences of
Enemy at the Gates
that borrow motifs from Horner's previous efforts are so numerous that
they are indeed quite distracting throughout the work. The seven-note
rip of the snare that originally defined
Glory is put to
extensive use, as is the snare combined with a tolling chime, which was
a staple of
Apollo 13. The distinct blasts of the four-note
danger motif on brass are right from the pages of the old
Star
Trek scores and, of course,
Willow. There is an entire
section in "Betrayal" (at 7:30 with full choir) and "Tania (End
Credits)" that is lifted from the sinking cues of
Titanic (which
itself dated back to
Apollo 13). The bass strings often strike
one note below key to signify the Russians, just as Horner did in
Red
Heat. The Tania theme has much in common with both
Balto and
John Williams' famous
Schindler's List; while some listeners
credit the latter connection to a common reference to Gustav Mahler's
Symphony No. 8, the similarities between the alternating opening
progression are really not that strong (given that they're only part of
a cascading effect in Mahler's piece that doesn't form a strong motif of
its own in that setting). Williams, of course, claims that his theme was
inspired by a Jewish folk song. Horner has a more difficult time
explaining himself in this situation, because while the theme is only
fragmented early in the score, its fully fluid performances in
"Betrayal" and "Tania (End Credits)" are so reminiscent of
Schindler's List that it will indeed bother many casual listeners
(and not just those finely tuned ears who hear such borrowing in every
Horner score). At least he didn't make the situation any worse by
employing a solo instrumentalist to perform the theme.
Smaller techniques in the score will also strike any
Horner collector as being familiar. This is nothing particularly new for
the composer, though the scope of his transgressions in
Enemy at the
Gates when it comes to classical music is more troublesome for other
listeners. Complaints through the years have been aimed at this score
for its similarity to music by Mahler, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff,
Shostakovich, and even, quite strangely, Philip Glass. While each of
these references could be argued on their individual merits, the very
fact that Horner's score suffers from such a quantity of complaints is
the more problematic issue. Some of the composer's collectors won't care
about these connections, and for such folks, the composer does at least
add one new element to all of this mix to keep this score distinct. In
this case, the somewhat redeeming element is the full adult chorus,
which is indeed quite impressive compared to the composer's usual boys
choir from previous works. Also new in this score is an uneasy sense of
dread that makes
Courage Under Fire seem like a walk in the park.
And yet, so overbearing is the music that its first nine tracks on album
fail to evoke any kind of emotional response from the listener. Not
until the final three tracks does this score really engage you, and by
then, over 50 minutes have already elapsed. Even though Sony Classical
was known at the time for pumping out the majority of Horner's scores at
lengths that tested the abilities of the compact disc,
Enemy at the
Gates would have made a much stronger 40 to 50-minute album. If the
plethora of unlistenable crashes and tightness of strings in this
album's first 50 minutes don't deter you, then the obvious connections
to the composer's previous works might. Either way, this listening
experience is impossible to recommend as an unconditionally enjoyable
one, despite the extremely attractive concluding 25 minutes. This is a
score that Horner collectors need to evaluate in the film itself before
making a blind purchase. Let the continuing controversy over the score's
blatant lack of originality serve as clear notice that
Enemy at the
Gates is indeed a flawed work.
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| Bias Check: |
For James Horner reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.16
(in 103 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.26
(in 192,938 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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