: (Randy Edelman) Michael Shaara's 1974
novel "The Killer Angels," winner of a Pulitzer Prize, is considered to
be among the most definitive (albeit partially fictionalized) accounts
of the battle of Gettysburg, a decisive conflict that turned the tide of
the American Civil War in 1863. A disastrous miscalculation by
Confederate General Robert E. Lee, the Southern Army's attempt to drive
north to encircle and force Washington into surrender, was rebuffed due
to poor strategic choices, including the famous Pickett's Charge that
led to 15,000 deaths alone. Ultimately, the three days of battle on
extremely hot and humid July days led to 50,000 fallen soldiers and sent
Lee's armies on a retreat that would eventually yield the end of the
war. An adaptation of Shaara's novel had been accepted and then rejected
by ABC in 1991, and it subsequently became the property of Ted Turner,
who infused the project with cash and used it as the centerpiece of his
TNT cable channel programming in 1994. He considered
to be so good that he released it in limited theatres through his
recently acquired New Line Cinema, and although it only grossed $10
million of its $25 budget from the big screen (a 254-minute running
time, complete with intermission, was a deterrent for some viewers), it
performed very strongly on TNT (23 million viewers in June, 1994) and
has experienced a rebirth on home video that more than covered the
production's original costs. The enthusiasm of several thousand
voluntary re-enactors and surprising permission by the National Park
Service to shoot some of the film on the actual battlefield helped curb
those costs. A veteran cast of B-list actors was largely applauded by
critics (including a great performance by character actor Richard Jordan
that would prove to his last), as was the pacing of director Ronald F.
Maxwell's screenplay. Contributing to the lasting popularity of
was Randy Edelman's hybrid score, a work that helped
launch the composer onto several blockbuster assignments for a short
time later in the 1990's. He had written a variety of decent, but not
particularly noteworthy budget scores (mostly for the comedy genre),
capped by his involvement in finishing compositional work for Trevor
Jones on the wildly embraced
Praise has long been showered down upon this score
(despite no awards consideration), a result of its obvious, bombastic
placement over the film's titles and featured action sequences. It has
been released several times on album and represents Edelman's lone entry
in many collections of casual soundtrack buyers. The music was
positively mentioned in reviews of the film in 1993 and has since
received almost unanimously glowing reviews from film score critics.
That applause stops here. One of the reasons it took until 2010 for an
editorial review of
Gettysburg to be published at Filmtracks is
because of this writer's immense admiration of Shaara's novel, respect
for Turner's production, and fundamental belief that Edelman's score
does an incredible injustice to both. Edelman and his simplistic style
of symphonic and synthetic blend have a place in the industry. In a film
like
Kindergarten Cop, it's hard to imagine a better approach.
For
Gettysburg, however, the composer's badly underdeveloped
structures and poor merging of electronic and organic elements is
painful to hear on screen, an obviously cheap detriment to the
production. It's hard not think that Turner, with his infinite wealth,
could have afforded a top-tier composer for
Gettysburg rather
than settling for music that sounds like inexpensive filler material
from a novice composer. You really can't blame Edelman for writing a
score that fits snugly into his comfort zone, but both
Gettysburg
and
Dragonheart beg questions of viability when compared to the
far more intricate and expertly constructed scores by Edelman's peers.
In the case of the latter score, the fantasy genre excused the sound to
the same extent that Mark Knopfler's
The Princess Bride was
deemed a success. But with
Gettysburg, there is really no way to
reconcile Edelman's underachieving constructs and cheap instrumental
tone when considering the topic of Shaara's novel. His themes are
incredibly bare, and despite their decent manipulation throughout the
score, they convey a level of simplicity that makes John Barry's bloated
romance themes of the era seem complicated. A songwriter at heart,
Edelman rarely instills his scores with compelling counterpoint,
dissonance, or texture, restricting him to the basic kinds of harmony
that have no prayer of scratching through the depths of Shaara's
multitudes of character sub-plots. Without any subtlety in the
constructs, this score is juvenile, mainstream, heroic fluff that has no
business being in this film.
Even if you can accept the blindly heroic themes in the
score for
Gettysburg, their bold statements deliberately blasting
away without any consideration of nuance or genuine gravity, the
orchestration of these ideas is abhorrent. In the moments during which
Edelman utilizes solo acoustic guitar or individual symphonic elements
for quiet interludes, his music transcends into appropriate territory.
But whenever he's attempting to emphasize the action (or prelude to it),
he props up the symphony with his usual synthetic, keyboarded tones that
defeat the historical atmosphere in return for beefing up the volume. At
times, this music sounds as though it could have been recorded by
Christopher Franke for a "Babylon 5" television episode. The electronic
rhythms and extremely dry snare during the entirety of "Battle at
Devil's Den," for instance, are so painfully misplaced that it might be
appropriate in a trashy thriller on the Sci-Fi Channel. The all-around
dry recording, with absolutely no reverb added to indicate a sense of
importance in the battle, is inexcusable. At times, Edelman even
completely misses the intended emotional impact of a scene, including
the soft heroism of "March to Mortality (Pickett's Charge)." Was he
completely incapable of applying the minor key or, for that matter, any
sense of dread, fear, death, or sorrow into cues such as this? His score
is so focused on capturing the noble spirit of the battle that no
significant distinction in tone is explored for the opposing sides, each
character, or even the progression of a battle that becomes ever so
desperate in its third day. In short, Edelman damn near ruined
Gettysburg with his excruciatingly disappointing score. The
masses may love it, but it's doubtful that the same masses have studied
Shaara's book and the gruesome conditions in which the Civil War was
fought. At least this vast underachievement was thoroughly corrected for
the 2003 prequel,
Gods and Generals, which features a score that
paired Edelman with John Frizzell, who turned towards James Horner's
seminal
Glory for better inspiration. Not surprisingly, like Hans
Zimmer's later
Pearl Harbor, Edelman's score does play much
better on album, where it has been successful enough to produce a few
follow-up products. The fact that this music makes for an alternately
stirring and relaxing product can't excuse its incredibly poor placement
in the film, and for those equally bothered by its inappropriate tone
and texture for
Gettysburg, there may be no escaping its
shortcomings even on its own. The killer angels deserve better than this
barely adequate, cheaply heroic rubbish.
@Amazon.com: CD or
Download
- Music as Written for the Film: **
- Music as Heard on Album: ***
- Overall: ***
| Bias Check: |
For Randy Edelman reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.06
(in 18 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.17
(in 28,014 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
