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| Goldsmith |
Forever Young: (Jerry Goldsmith) Nostalgically
poetic and coated with about as much sugar as humanly possible,
Forever Young is a fantasy love story that goes so far with its
exploits of romanticism that it even throws in a dose of early J.J.
Abrams science fiction to enhance a 1930's locale and soaring propeller
airplanes. The film was immediately recognized for what it was by
audiences and critic alike: a light-duty escape during which women can
shed a tear while their boyfriends or husbands glance around for the
nearest exit or alcoholic beverage. After his 1930's love interest is
put into a coma by an accident, a test pilot played by Mel Gibson, with
nothing left worth living for, decides to rely upon his best friend, a
scientist played by George Wendt (warning flags should go up right
there), to conjure an unusual solution. Rather than simply killing
himself (where would be the fun in that movie?), the scientist freezes
the pilot in an experimental cryogenics device that had been
successfully tested on a chicken. Circumstances cause the pilot to
remain frozen for over 50 years, mostly undisturbed in his capsule
before a pair of kids accidentally thaws him out while playing in an old
military storage depot. The film then follows the tender relationship
between the pilot and the two boys, as well some sweetness between
Gibson and Jamie Lee Curtis, before the inevitable search for the
now-elderly and recovered lover yields predictable results. A film like
Forever Young relies heavily upon its score to create the right
atmosphere for its love story (especially in the innocence of the 1930's
settings), although in this particular case, the filmmakers had the need
for some whimsical flying music as well. Director Steve Miner referred
to composer Jerry Goldsmith, with whom he had worked on the lower budget
Warlock a few years earlier, as a "godsend" to
Forever
Young. It is the kind of project very typical of Goldsmith's
emphasis in the early 1990's, with high string love themes in the
concurrent
Medicine Man and
Mr. Baseball leading to a
similar flow of airy, pleasant emotion in
Forever Young. A touch
of elegance, a dash of adventure, and a heavy dose of sentimentality are
the recipe once again, and
Forever Young remains one of the
better embraced by the composer's enthusiasts.
For those collectors who have long defended
Forever
Young as being among their favorites from this period of the
composer's output, the main enticement is the love theme for the film.
With the same attraction of the stylistically overblown
Rent-A-Cop theme and the instrumental ease that prevails in
Powder and other soft ventures, the
Forever Young love
theme has a timeless quality and an innocence of heart that listeners
would never really hear again from Goldsmith. This project would
arguably be the composer's last attempt (and among few overall) to
handle a film with completely innocuous beauty and romantic lyricism at
its core, though the love theme is appropriately downplayed in the
middle portions of the score. The piano and solo woodwind performances
of that theme are surprisingly tepid in their expressions, pretty but
not really resounding with the kind of weight that you'd expect for the
science-fiction aspect of the tale. If you are seeking Goldsmith's more
ambitious and adventuresome music, however,
Forever Young holds a
significantly more engaging secondary theme that will interest you. The
composer's "flight theme" is clearly the highlight of the score,
manipulated to address both the awe of flight and the daring piloting
sequences that offer the film's only suspense. The expression of this
theme in "Test Flight" sets the bar too high for the rest of the score,
bursting with full ensemble hits in later
Star Trek mode and
general excitement maintained by Goldsmith's typical rhythmic
propulsion. Driven on the album version of the cue by a Basil
Poledouris-like electronic bass pulse, the soaring brass theme for
French horns, punctuated by bright hits by the full ensemble, is
accompanied by string performances of the melody that faintly (but
strangely appropriately) resemble John Williams' love theme for
Superman. Solemn brass expressions of this theme are reprised in
"The Air Show." As the pilot teaches one of the boys in the future how
to fly a plane on his cardboard cutout of a cockpit in "The Tree House,"
Goldsmith skillfully repeats the "Test Flight" cue as a ghostly version
of itself; the piano and woodwind rhythms in this version seemingly
foreshadow the water tank sequence of
The Shadow. While some of
the propulsive exuberance from the opening cue accompanies the flying
scenes at the end of the film, the sentimentality of the impending
reunion waters down the rhythmic pace-setters with uncertainty on a solo
piano. The album version of "Reunited," however, does feature a slight
tingling of Goldsmith's electronics that lend a hint of magic to that
scene.
Outside of the statements of the love and flight themes
in
Forever Young, however, including the brief flashes of
adventure associated with the latter, the score is surprisingly muted
and conservative. Goldsmith's treatment of the significant sequences
involving the pilot's acclamation to the future and his relationship
with the people who house him at that time is disappointingly
underplayed. Most of these cues are barely audible in their tonal
meandering on strings and piano, and perhaps it's no surprise that a
fair number of them were ultimately removed from the picture. On the
whole,
Forever Young is an above-average Goldsmith work because
of its two memorable themes, but don't expect the mass of the underscore
in the middle sequences of the story to compete favorably with the
highlights. In all its parts, the score resides at the much fluffier end
of the fantasy scale for the composer, making it an extremely easy
listening experience on album despite its dull portions. The Brad
Dechter soprano sax arrangement of the love theme (anchoring the start
of the 1992 album) is a mushy extension of John Barry proportions for an
otherwise standard Goldsmith idea. That original 1992 album was
completely out of print in the 2000's, although it contains a satisfying
35 minutes of Goldsmith's music and the vintage Billie Holiday end
credits source song at the conclusion. The composer interestingly chose
to tinker a bit with the mix of his album presentation (perhaps
exercising ideas he had hoped to insert into the film but was blocked),
emphasizing a greater role for his trademark electronics in several
cues. The pulsating bass effect in "Test Flight" is the most obvious
deviation from the film version, an effective aid in recognizing the
gravity of the scene had it been used on screen. When La-La Land Records
released an expanded album containing the score in 2011, it reshaped the
music heard in the film into a proper presentation and appended several
alternate takes, the love theme rearrangement, the Holiday song, and
Goldsmith's notable album-version variants. Although it's a bit odd to
hear the "Test Flight" and "Reunited" flying sequences without the
synthetic accompaniment (or with it diminished), the sound quality of
the film versions on this album are noticeably superior, including a
tastefully improved touch of reverb. While
Forever Young is a bit
of a lightweight of a score and the expanded album may not be
justifiable for all collectors, those who have long maintained a special
place in their hearts for this music will find no fault with the 2011
album's presentation. The score is an endearing entry with a couple of
fantastic highlights, but far from the classic that some claim it to
be.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
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| Bias Check: |
For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.26
(in 124 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.29
(in 153,456 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
The insert of the 1992 Big Screen album includes lengthy information about
Goldsmith and a note from the director. The 2011 La-La Land album's insert includes
an extensive analysis of both the score and film.
