: (James Horner) Based on writer
W.P. Kinsella's book "Shoeless Joe," Phil Alden Robinson's 1989 movie
is as close to an Americana film about religion
as you can possibly get. The popular flick with Kevin Costner in the
lead role abandons all common sense and throws magic and history into
the cornfields of Iowa. When Costner's farming character hears
whispering voices telling him to build a baseball diamond on his land
with the promise that the ghosts of famous ball players will inhabit it
for games at night (leading to a pop culture phenomenon based upon the
"If you build it, they will come" line), you can't help but follow the
religious parallels between a deity requesting a cathedral and a deity
instead requesting a baseball diamond in the middle of nowhere. Baseball
here is the religion, and the film takes the opportunity to draw
important comparisons between the game and real-life philosophical
issues that provide for some heartfelt speeches before the story is
done, including obligatory inspiration from James Earl Jones. Unlike
Costner, composer James Horner had never been a fan of the American
pastime. But when he first saw a cut of
, he fell
in love with the story and jumped at the assignment despite his lack of
knowledge about the sport. Robinson had originally used a selection of
modern jazz as a temp score for the film, and the disapproving studio
was very supportive of Horner's hiring because the executives believed
that he would inject the spirit of his science fiction and adventure
scores into the picture. In fact, Horner defied their expectations and
agreed with the inclinations of the director about the story's need for
atypical music, and he wrote an arguably minimalistic score dominated by
electronics, piano, and specialty instruments, diverting at times for
vintage swing pieces. He then employed an orchestra for only the final
few minutes of music during the dramatic closing sequences of the story,
and this usage was enough to satisfy the studio.
While reliance on small ensembles and synthetics is done
all the time in Hollywood for budgetary reasons, Horner claims to have
approached
Field of Dreams with this intention of reaching the
nostalgic Americana summary via the orchestra only at the end.
Interestingly, his claims of wanting to write a "magical Americana"
score for
Field of Dreams are contradicted by his finished
result, a score that has a fairly low amount of magic and very little
Aaron Copland Americana spirit at all. Both
The Natural by Randy
Newman and
For the Love of the Game by Basil Poledouris better
capture baseball's historical place in America's culture through
orchestral and contemporary tones. The fact that
Field of Dreams
was nominated for an Academy Award that year instead of the far more
authentic and deserving
Glory is testimony to that awarding
body's deeply rooted and forever persisting faults. Little consistency
is to be heard from Horner from start to finish in
Field of
Dreams, the composer introducing the score with a solo horn leading
to a broad, bass whole note complete with the tingling percussive
effects that mirror
The Natural. From there, Horner's solo piano
performances speak to the atmosphere of the simple life on the farm.
These two sequences represent the composer's main thematic identities in
the work. The former is what he terms the "calling theme," its
meandering, descending tones rumbling with those low piano notes akin to
Newman whenever a sense of gravity is needed. That instrumental
technique promises more than it delivers, though it will likely suffice
to evoke feelings of awe and realization from the audience. The latter
is deemed the "Irish theme" for the main character and his relationship
with his father. The calling theme, after that performance on solo horn
at 0:15 into "The Cornfield," becomes a four-note "voice motif" in
several synthetic cues and persists in that form late in "Deciding to
Build the Field," tentatively in "Shoeless Joe," and with particular
eeriness in "Terence's Vision." The rumbles underneath the theme return
early in "The Decision" and define some of the swells of the orchestra
in "The Place Where Dreams Come True" and "End Credits."
The Irish theme in
Field of Dreams, meanwhile,
is the solo piano identity introduced at 1:29 into "The Cornfield" an
recurs early in "Deciding to Build the Field," again on solo piano in
"Night Mists," and also in fuller form in "The Place Where Dreams Come
True," where it notably moves to acoustic guitar at 5:08 before
transferring to the ensemble in this cue and "End Credits." These piano
performances by Horner for this theme are as sterile as any in his
career. A lesser theme is afforded the Graham character (Burt
Lancaster), its descending piano figures forceful on piano in
"'Moonlight' Graham" and opening "The Timeless Street," "I Play
Baseball," and "Rookies" before resolving in "Doc's Memories." Sadly,
none of these themes is memorable or particularly effective, each a
shadow of better ideas in other Horner scores. By underplaying them, the
composer fails to establish meaningful connections between the music and
concepts of the story. Perhaps these ills related to the fact that
Horner didn't actually write much of his score out ahead of time,
keeping the themes in his head and recording his minimal ensemble in jam
sessions. With the resulting thematic passages too muted and
underdeveloped to function, the
Field of Dreams score relies upon
its unique cues of volume to sustain interest. His light rock "building
theme" occupies two cues, "Deciding to Build the Field" ironically
coming the closest to addressing the heart of the film's ambition. The
pan pipes are a bastardized relative to baseball park organs in Horner's
mind, so thus he had an excuse to apply them here. They do provide the
score's most upbeat and arguably alluring moment; the contemporary pan
pipe-led performance of the building theme in "The Library" is the
highlight of the score despite owing a substantial debt to Hans Zimmer's
Rain Man. Outside of these moments, several brooding cues of
heavy electronic base and meandering key shifts occupy the middle
portions of the score, existing as a mundane cross between lengthy
synthetic motifs of
The Name of the Rose and the slightly atonal
aspects of
Vibes. For "Old Ball Players," "Dinner's Ready," and
"Night Game," Horner launches into another completely unrelated musical
genre: authentic big band jazz from
Cocoon for the era of the
ghosts.
In the atmospheric portions of
Field of Dreams,
a light and eerie synthetic choir fades in and out over solo piano
meanderings, struggling to engage you before the orchestra finally makes
itself known in "Doc's Memories" and the subsequent closing cues. The
final fifteen minutes of the score are perhaps its most overrated,
attempting to emulate the same sense of weighty importance as
Cocoon but failing to achieve the truly genuine feeling of broad,
string-based Americana that would manifest itself in later projects such
as
Deep Impact and
Legends of the Fall. Its stature
remains underplayed even at these moments. The acoustic guitar conveying
the Irish theme in "The Place Where Dreams Come True" could have better
tied the entire project together had Horner expanded its role in the
score. In the end, despite all the intellectual postulation about this
score's "less is more" greatness,
Field of Dreams is an
ineffectively cold work that just doesn't make much sense when
considering the subject matter and depth of heart involved in the
characters. For a film about ghosts, family, and baseball in Iowa, the
electronic approach is a wasted opportunity, and the contrast between
the first three quarters of the score and the last fifteen minutes is
not great enough for Horner's desired dramatic effect. For years, the
original commercial CD album for
Field of Dreams was a relative
rarity after initially slipping out of print, and Horner collectors and
concept enthusiasts clung desperately to their copies despite the
score's remarkably curious appeal. In 2022, La-La Land Records issued a
limited 2-CD set that adds an additional eight minutes of all-new
material and presents the film version of several cues in a more
faithful presentation of the score on the first disc. The second disc
offers a straight remastering of the prior album. The sound quality on
the product is improved but not to extraordinary levels. Three
additional cues are appended to the first disc, the only interesting
track among them a different take on "Deciding to Build the Field" that
switches around the rock elements in the building theme. This expanded
album is a loving treatment of the score, but don't expect any better
connection with the longer presentation. Ultimately,
Field of
Dreams is a basically competent score that risks alienating you with
its cool restraint, and this tact by Horner makes the work a highly
overrated prospect as well.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For James Horner reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.15
(in 108 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.23
(in 203,346 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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