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| Horner |
Field of Dreams: (James Horner) Based on writer
W.P. Kinsella's book "Shoeless Joe," Phil Alden Robinson's 1989 movie
Field of Dreams 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 baseball 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 God requesting a cathedral and God
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. Unlike Costner, composer James Horner had never been a fan of the
American pastime. But when he first saw a cut of
Field of Dreams,
he fell in love with the story and jumped at the assignment despite his
lack of knowledge about the sport. The director had originally used a
selection of jazz as a temp score for the film, and the disapproving
studio was very supportive of Horner's hiring because they believed that
he would inject the spirit of his science fiction and adventure scores
into the picture. In fact, Horner defied their expectations and wrote an
arguably minimalistic score dominated by electronics, piano, and
specialty instruments. He then employed an orchestra for only the final
few minutes of music during the finale sequence. While such moves are
made 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 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 Americana spirit about it 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 cultural 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 AMPAS' deeply rooted faults.
For years, the 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,
this despite the score's remarkably curious appeal. Little consistency
is to be heard from start to finish, the composer introducing the score
with a solo horn leading to a broad, base 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. Without warning, he then launches into his light rock
"building theme" that occupies two of the cues on the album. These two
passages ironically come the closest to addressing the heart of the
film's ambition, and the pan pipe-led performance of the theme in "The
Library" is the highlight of the album despite owing a substantial debt
to Hans Zimmer's
Rain Man. 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," Horner launches into another
completely unrelated musical genre: authentic big band jazz for the era
of the ghosts. A light, eerie synthetic choir fades in and out over solo
piano meanderings in the latter half of the score before the orchestra
finally makes itself known in "Doc's Memories" and subsequent cues. The
final fifteen minutes of
Field of Dreams 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. One difficulty
with this score is that it features only one consistent instrumental
element throughout, a pulsing bass string effect (real or synthetic)
that's meant to evoke moments of awe and realization from the audience.
An acoustic guitar in "The Place Where Dreams Come True" could have
better tied the entire project together had Horner expanded its role in
the score. Thematic foreshadowing of the melody heard in the final cue
is extremely minimal as well. As such,
Field of Dreams just
doesn't make much sense. For a film about ghosts 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. Ultimately, it is
a basically competent score but a highly overrated one as well.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
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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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The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
"You know, I never was a baseball fan. I still don't know anything about
baseball, but when I saw the movie, I loved it from the moment I saw it.
I wanted to write something very magical for it --yet something uniquely
American-- and it has an Aaron Copland-like sound. This last sequence is
a very long sequence; it's about sixteen minutes long and goes all the
way to the end credits. The director initially had new age jazz on it,
and the studio was horrified, but they were pleased that I was doing it
because I was going to do --like-- a big
Star Trek score on it.
They felt very confident in that direction and I had no intention of
doing that kind of score at all. Most of the score in
Field of
Dreams is electronic; the last two minutes of the score are
orchestral. It was done for dramatic reason where I tied together all the
threads of the film that I had been weaving throughout into the last two
cues. That's really where the story comes together ultimately. I just
thought it was a wonderful film; I wish that those kind of movies came
along more often, but they don't."
--from James Horner's Melbourne (Australia) Seminar in December, 1991.
