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PRINTER-FRIENDLY VIEW 
Review of Inferno (Hans Zimmer/Various)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you admire attempts by Hans Zimmer's team to explore
ever-increasing discord and disillusionment in its experimentation with
soulless synthetic processing to generate challenging soundscapes.
Avoid it... if you maintain that film music exists to connect emotionally with the heart even in the most frightening and suspenseful environments, because this franchise's music has degenerated into mere noise outside of its reprises of existing themes.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Inferno: (Hans Zimmer/Various) Professor Robert
Langdon has some pretty damn poor luck when you think about it. Like
Professor Indiana Jones, he shaves years off the end of his life chasing
impossible conspiracies, but unlike Indy, he doesn't seem to have much
fun along the way. In Inferno, Tom Hanks returns as Langdon,
author Dan Brown's expert on religious history, and with the continued
guidance of director Ron Howard, the protagonist is chased, abused, and
betrayed at nearly every turn. The script of the 2016 film is convoluted
and silly, the professor running about the Mediterranean searching for a
hidden terrorist virus that will eradicate mankind. In yet another
Langdon film, he's accompanied by a new piece of eye candy with brunette
hair, but this time she strays towards the psycho bitch territory.
Critics rolled their eyes impatiently while domestic audiences shrugged
it off, though solid international returns for Inferno salvaged
the production fiscally. Also resurrecting ghosts of the franchise's
glory days is Hans Zimmer, armed this time with five or six choice
ghostwriters from his Remote Control music production house. The year
started relatively well for the veteran composer (the children's genre
seems to bring out the only true romantic heart he once exhibited
regularly in the early 1990's), but disillusion with or indifference to
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and lesser projects lead
directly into similar reactions to Inferno. Zimmer has rolled
over the popularity of his 2000's and 2010's ensemble works into an
apparent interest in not only perpetuating the failed methodology of
group scoring but exploration of new instrumental avenues made possible
by the expertise of his collaborators. By the time of Inferno,
this experimentation pulled Zimmer back to some of his earliest days of
synthetic programming, the composer seemingly content to resurrect the
sounds of the 1980's in fresh ways.
The resulting convergence of classic Moog tones and the excessive post-processing of today yields some truly frightening and atrocious results in Inferno, the striving for innovation admirable but largely unsuccessful. There is something to be said about the technical prowess Zimmer's team is attempting to exploit, for the product of their tinkering does continue to sell albums. But, ultimately, the journey to synthetic processing glory comes at the expense of nuanced emotional gravitas, Inferno remaining as cold and underachieving as Chappie and Zimmer's superhero efforts. Perhaps the greatest disappointment regarding Inferno is its degeneration of emotional connection from The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons. There are plenty of melodic nods to the prior scores, certainly, but whereas Zimmer reserved some of his best writing of recent years for those prior scores, Inferno is an intentional blast of disorientation and abrasiveness from the composer. He warned listeners about this move, claiming this score to be "reckless experimentation" that is "not for the faint of heart." The justification for this transition exists in the perception by Zimmer and Howard (the director was fully supportive of the composer in taking this darker path) that Inferno has abandoned much of the classicism of the original character's world and represents instead an apocalyptic, technological threat. Where Zimmer sees the words "apocalyptic" and "technological," discordant synthetic musical experimentation must apparently follow. In his seemingly genuine passion for finding that grating new electronic manipulation, however, the important element of humanity is totally lost. The music for Inferno is soulless propulsion and simplistic horror and suspense ambience in only Zimmer's vague voice. There are so many ghostwriters involved here, some of whom likely pushing this synthetic abrasiveness with zeal, that we begin to lose, for long sequences, any attempt to emulate the better aspects of a classic "Zimmereque" sound. If not for a few nostalgic bursts of 1990's Zimmer choral depth and the themes from the prior two films in the franchise, one could mistaken Inferno for a cheap attempt by some non-Zimmer-affiliated composer to force Vangelis of the early 1980's into the post-processing era. In fact, you can hear a shameless Blade Runner rip at 1:28 into "Remove Langdon." It's a sad, discouraging trend that leaves listeners wading through long cues of nearly insufferable rhythmic noise, badly edited and haphazardly shifting in direction. So much of Inferno is just plain awful drivel, and you have to wonder how long this kind of heartless contrivance (for a film involving mass death and people willing to commit suicide for a cause, no less) can be marketed by the Zimmer machine as being innovative at all. The bulk of Inferno is really no different from the worst suspense and chase sequences of the Zimmer team's superhero scores, reminding of Tom Holkenborg's rather unaccomplished scores in their advancement of technology and failing to push that experimentation into any intellectually engaging direction as at least Steven Price has managed to achieve during the same years. One is tempted to point to ghostwriters Steve Mazzaro and Andrew Kawczynski for perpetuating this particular direction of Zimmer's hideousness. Not all is lost in the hazy befuddlement of Inferno, however. There is just enough sunlight from Zimmer's better inclinations to offer some really solid highlights amongst the muck, and almost all of it exists as some reference to The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons. Zimmer and his team have to be commended for staying true to not only the famed "CheValiers de Sangreal" theme from The Da Vinci Code but the "Science and Religion" theme from Angels & Demons as well. Both themes, in fact, are integral to this score and that's an extremely important choice given the relative lack of new thematic identity attempted by Zimmer here. The only obvious new theme exists for an important but not critical character; the Elizabeth Sinskey ally of Langdon is afforded a theme consisting of pairs of piano notes. The female lead, meanwhile, receives nothing. Nor do the villain or his evil plot get the identities they deserve. More critically, there is no deception attempted in how Zimmer handles the music for the concepts and characters in Inferno, and that's a huge mistake and disappointment. Why does Sienna Brooks receive no musical identity that shifts dramatically mid-film? Lost opportunities abound. The Elizabeth theme recurs in "Venice," "Elizabeth," and "Life Must Have its Mysteries," though it's a weak identity that only engages well when placed in appropriate counterpoint with the "CheValiers de Sangreal" theme. That theme is heard in "I'm Feeling a Tad Vulnerable," "Professor," "Vayentha," "Elizabeth," and "The Logic of Tyrants" before its updated, heavier concert arrangement in "Life Must Have its Mysteries," the easy highlight of this score. The "Science and Religion" theme, meanwhile is expressed in "Maybe Pain Can Save Us," "Via Dolorosa #12 Apartment 3C," and "Our Own Hell on Earth" but is more faithfully reprised with solo violin in "Beauty Awakens the Soul to Act." Don't expect the solo string players in this score to compete against the battery of synthesizers. Even the full orchestral string section is swallowed up in the processed soundscape outside of "Life Must Have its Mysteries." One exception remains the hidden highlight of the score in "Venice," a more accessible cue that includes some stellar rolling piano and marimba rhythms of suspense in a fantastic tonal atmosphere complete with Crimson Tide choir. This cue proves that a film like Inferno could have benefited greatly from this kind of tonal but effectively suspenseful writing. No post-processed evisceration of intelligent noise was necessary to convey the point of the film. In the end, listeners will have to decide for themselves about how the relatively "cheap" sound of Inferno can suffice. Is it possible that all this supposedly revolutionary tinkering with electronics is destined to fail because none of it connects with the hearts of listeners? Should it bother us that Zimmer and his team, with their infinite resources, produce a cue like "Doing Nothing Terrifies Me" that would fit right at home with John Ottman's low-tech but infinitely more intelligent Point of Origin? At what point does Zimmer step back from his ghostwriters and realize that the primary purpose of a soundtrack is not to innovate but rather augment and tell a story through sincere emotion? You can only hit a person over the head with a brick so many times... **
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 70:45
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
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