Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #522
Written 7/8/99, Revised 9/8/08
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Buy it... only if you appreciated the combination of Carter
Burwell's understated dramatic score and the synthetic adaptation of
traditional spiritual pieces in the film itself.
Avoid it... if you expect Burwell's score to provide a convincing
or interesting atmosphere of mystery or melodrama.
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| Burwell |
The General's Daughter: (Carter Burwell) Playing
along similar lines as military investigation films like A Few Good
Men and Courage Under Fire, Simon West's The General's
Daughter is a generic entry in the genre. The Con Air
director handles a decent, though not overwhelming cast in a murder
mystery that takes the leading investigators on a journey through the
ranks of an American military base to discover who gang raped and killed
the daughter of the base's commanding general during a nighttime
exercise. The film was greeted with moderate success, and John Travolta
in the main role is surprisingly convincing, but not even a hint of
kinky sexuality and nudity could save the film from the ranks of average
murder mysteries. It's the kind of production that follows so many
conventions of the genre that any intelligent viewer can guess the plot
after the first forty minutes. Less conventional is how West handled the
music for The General's Daughter. He approached the project in a
manner almost familiar to Michael Mann, which, for soundtrack
collectors, should immediately indicate that an usual set of incongruous
sounds are likely to be assembled for the musical ambience in this film.
Indeed, West's merging of extremely diverse musical genres into the
soundtrack for The General's Daughter diminishes its impact as a
cohesive whole. He started with a series of traditional Negro Spiritual
songs, resurrected from their original performances in the Library of
Congress Field Recordings archive. Unfortunately, these Southern gothic
tunes are translated into modern technological soundscapes by composer
Greg Hale Jones, producing a disjointed sound of two eras that
definitely were not meant to mix. Also present is an old Welsh hymn,
which is performed on glockenspiel to imitate a favorite music box tune
of the director. Also licensed is a somewhat sparse and poorly rendered
performance of Carl Orff's tired old "O Fortuna!" from "Carmina Burana."
Add on a generally conservative score by Carter Burwell and you have an
overall soundtrack that defies conventional norms. Even in the score
portion of the film's soundtrack album release, Burwell attempts to
infuse electronic spirit into an otherwise lifeless orchestral
score.
West claims that he had been attracted to Burwell's
potential style for
The General's Daughter after hearing the
composer's music for
Fargo and
Conspiracy Theory. And, if
you didn't think it was possible, Burwell surprisingly creates a
mutation of those two scores for
The General's Daughter. The
resulting sound is distinctly Burwell's, especially in his habit of
writing extremely deliberate themes that take a while to unfold (in
terms of pacing), but there's also a hint of James Horner and Howard
Shore's more restrained work for understated orchestral drama at the
time. It's a monothematic score, establishing its extremely
conservative, faintly noble theme in "Exercise in Darkness" (the most
important stage-setting scene in the film) and rearranging the idea in
several cues thereafter. Burwell successfully presents the restrained
string theme in a tone that suggests a military conspiracy, but the
basic effectiveness of that theme doesn't entail any specific memorable
aspect in its construct. The idea dies quickly after the conclusion of
the score. The lack of any musical identity for the victim, or any other
singular character or element of the story, is disappointing. More
memorable are some of the instrumental colors that Burwell attempts to
paint with later in the work, starting with a slight rhythmic swagger in
"Epiphytic Shuffle" that not only raises memories of
Conspiracy
Theory in its movement, but also utilizes electronic instruments and
a variety of struck percussion with stronger appeal. This technique
culminates in "The Conspiracy," with slapping percussion taking center
stage. As Burwell brings the theme to its natural, chime-tolling
conclusion with solo trumpet predictably marking the gravity of the
finale, he can't resist using an excerpt from "Amazing Grace" on
bagpipes to drive the point home. Ultimately, Burwell's score works. But
it's frightfully boring, really, and it misses the opportunity to merge
with the elements of the Southern Gospel source music to produce a truly
unique listening experience. The Negro Spiritual pieces adapted for the
film are extremely annoying on album and aren't even worth a cursory
examination. The entire product exists in a dull haze, failing to
produce a convincing (or even interesting) atmosphere of tension.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
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Bias Check:
For Carter Burwell reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.84
(in 19 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 2.82
(in 11,704 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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