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FILMTRACKS.COM
PRINTER-FRIENDLY VIEW 
Review of The Forgotten (James Horner)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you could find comfort in fifteen minutes of
pleasantly dramatic cloudiness led by a romantic piano and a solo string
theme over eerie synthetic tones that mimic the sound and feel of Mark
Snow's music for "The X-Files."
Avoid it... if those fifteen minutes of restrained highlights is not worth another forty-five minutes of electronic clanging, aimless droning, and stark atmospheric suspense.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
The Forgotten: (James Horner) It's a premise that
intrigued nearly everyone when the film was in post-production during
the summer of 2004. A mother's son is killed in a plane crash and while
that mother is grieving, the entire world eventually comes around to
tell her that her son actually never existed. That child, they say, died
in a miscarriage and the mother, who is balancing on the edge of
insanity, has mentally fabricated all of the memories of the child, the
pictures, and the home videos she so dearly remembers. She spends the
rest of the film grappling with this possible truth while resisting it
at the same time and attempting to verify her own instincts. Director
Joseph Ruben's The Forgotten was received with severely mixed
reviews, some critics and audiences accepting of the film's ultimate
truth while others believed that the revelations at the end cheapened
the film beyond repair. Ruben was best known for his depictions of
psychological family-related thrillers, and it could be argued that the
strong cast of The Forgotten saves it from total mediocrity for
most audiences. The 2004 film, despite earning enough to turn a profit,
was his final venture for a long time. Never having worked with composer
James Horner before, Ruben's choice for his music was strong. It's a
subject matter and tone that probably would have best suited James
Newton Howard, but after widely varying the emotional range of his
scores in the previous year, Horner seemed ready for another topic
relating to troubled families, and, more specifically, one of suspense.
Horner's approach to interpersonal struggle has traditionally revolved
around a meandering piano, and The Forgotten returns to that
familiar territory. The score blurs the lines between soft
sentimentality and unsettled ambience, soothing the listener with tonal,
rambling piano performances while often jarring that experience with an
assault of dissonant electronics. To describe the score in any detail,
and especially the use of the synthetic elements, it would be nearly
impossible not to divulge the "major twist" that caused the polarization
of critics and audiences of the film, so if you don't wish to know the
ending of The Forgotten, then stop reading here and stick with
the recommendation of Horner's score made in the "Filmtracks Recommends"
section above.
If you don't know anything about the end of The Forgotten and you listen to Horner's score "cold" on album (meaning that you are a Horner collector who buys his scores for the music, not because of anything relating to the films), then you could easily be left scratching your head about why this entry relies so heavily on the troubling synthesizer programming of Randy Kerber and Ian Underwood. The score opens with two cues of emotionally griping and gorgeous piano, solo violin, and orchestral, thought-provoking dreaminess. It's reminiscent of contemplative moments in the Deep Impact and Bicentennial Man era of Horner's late 1990's work, and the eerie synthetic choral tones of "Remember..." are a strong foreshadowing of the brooding "Winter" sequence in the forthcoming The New World. Hints of innocence in the piano's performances will be vaguely familiar for those who enjoy House of Cards and Horner's other relatively early scores for familial challenges. The score becomes an odd mixture of The Name of the Rose and Beyond Borders in the science-fiction portions, representing the mystery of the alien forces and the desperation of the mother with extremely difficult passages of gloom. Some of the obnoxious pitch-falling vocal effects go all the way back to Vibes. The electronics are pervasive, harsh, and intentionally disrupting at every opportunity, built and sustained by Horner as counterpoint to the solo piano and violin that obviously represent the motherly love at the heart of the story. In the case of The Forgotten, Horner knows the twist at the end while composing the beginning, and he therefore scored the film as an unsettling science-fiction effort from the start. Perhaps Howard better masks the musical narrative when his films fall hopelessly back upon the "aliens theory" resolution, as The Forgotten does. In this case, the use of jarring electronics by Horner foreshadows the highly technological and futuristic twist of the tale, and that's why the score is not your typical Horner psychological drama along the lines of House of Sand and Fog. There is no sense of urgency to this music, though. The tone instead implies that the lead character has simply been bludgeoned several times and is conducting her search in a hazy fog rather than following a process of unraveling the tone and structures of the music as her world is turned upside down. Although the disparate tones are layered extensively in The Forgotten, it could be argued that Horner did a rather poor job of integrating the futuristic and family elements in this score. Outside of the double metallic clangs that hover over the performances of the title theme, the romantic notions of family, those which offer a compelling theme existing most often throughout the score as one of Horner's favorite free-flowing progression of keys, are abruptly shattered during the moments of chase and science-fiction. It's basically effective, but not particularly intelligent. When you separate the music from its context, there are essentially two different scores here: the one that Horner fans will love for its fifteen minutes of lightly dramatic cloudiness, and the one that meanders hopelessly through a myriad of atmospheric, electronic banging and droning. The largely synthetic cue "Containment of a Darker Purpose" is among Horner's most obnoxious and intolerable pieces of music during the entire decade. The revelation cue, "Profound Emptiness... The Hangar," fails to collect Horner's previously stated motifs and twist them into a new reality or even, at the very least, some kind of slowly developed, emotional crescendo. If you purchase this album, do it for the performances of the main theme in the product's first track and final two tracks, all of which contain the sound of playing children at either the start or end of the cue. The electronic accompaniment in these cues will sound much like that from Horner's late 1980's equivalents, serving as a mock-up type of tone in contemporary times. Both halves of the score can be best summed up by "Remember...," a cue that serves up the fullest, most romantic performance of the addictively elusive main theme (with especially pronounced piano) and then spoils that mood with striking electronic interruptions and stark tonal changes. Whether this juxtaposition works in the film or not, it leaves the album with only about fifteen minutes of marginally enjoyable material. If you assemble the highlights of the album alone, you have a high three-star suite of music that sounds remarkably similar to the creepy Mark Snow music you might encounter in an episode of "The X-Files." Devoted Horner collectors will find much comfort in this material. But you cannot help but get the impression that the composer could have produced a far more eloquent and interesting merging of his tender family motifs and the futuristic science-fiction atmosphere if he had integrated his electronics more creatively into the mix and tended better to the narrative flow of the story. **
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 59:29
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
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