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| Doyle |
Into the West: (Patrick Doyle) An obscure 1992 film
about Irish Travellers that was oddly aimed at a space between children
and adults,
Into the West tries to blend the boundaries between
Irish fantasy concepts and children's Western adventure. A family of
respected Travellers must contend with the death of the mother in
childbirth, leaving the father and two boys destitute. The boys use
their imaginations to dream up a wild Western life after they are
followed by a mysterious white horse. As the family perseveres and is
brutalized by the police, the horse is taken from them, and they spend
the remainder of the picture retrieving the animal and learning, of
course, that it is, to some extent, in spirit with their dead mother.
Despite reasonable critical response,
Into the West was a
financial failure in Ireland, and today itis notable for initiating the
working collaboration between director Mike Newell and composer Patrick
Doyle, their films together culminating in
Harry Potter and the
Goblet of Fire the following decade. For Doyle, the film came just a
few years into his active composing career, and the only work he had
done in this genre was
Shipwrecked two years prior. Since the
movie contains a number of anonymously obscure pop songs of the era, the
score is relatively short and utilizes very brief cues on average. Doyle
dove into the folk mysticism of the story, likening Irish and Scottish
folk music and thus assisting in his Celtic tilt on the music. There is
a limited orchestral ensemble that concentrates most of its volume on
strings, and the sound of the score is too sparse for the fantasy realm
at times, the same issue that had plagued
Shipwrecked. The Celtic
flavor is emphasized rather than a Western one suggested by the film's
art and premise. While penny whistle and fiddle are the most obvious
representations of this culture, the composer does squeeze a banjo and
acoustic guitar to provide a slight Western influence into that equation
as well. The Celtic flavor may have been influenced by Fiachra Trench's
involvement as orchestrator and conductor, much like it was in Hans
Zimmer's
Fools of Fortune not long before.
Some of the story's mystical portions are well served
by the brief score's solo female vocal renderings, but the action in
Into the West really lacks power. Those vocals, however, are the
obvious highlight, lyricized performances based upon a poem about the
land of "Tir-Na-Nog," per Doyle's library research for the score. The
narrative is largely monothematic, but there are a few secondary modes
at work as well. Doyle concentrates his energy on the main theme for the
mother's spirit and associated horse, an ancient-sounding, folk-like
lullaby performed by the composer's sister, Margaret Doyle, in a Celtic
manner. The opening notes of the melody are particularly awkward, the
theme somewhat elusive in its progressions, and the interlude sequence
of the theme is far superior to the primary line. The idea is summarized
in "The Blue Sea and the White Horse," where it opens the cue on harp
and later adds strings on fragments of the theme as a quick adventure
motif. The full melody with spoken vocals commences at 1:10 with
romantic harp, penny whistle, and string lines. The vocal performances
occupy most of the rest of the cue, and the fantastic interlude sequence
is introduced at 2:12 with more dramatic vocal force. This theme opens
"He Turned Into Dust" on various string tones, joined by penny whistle
in somber expression. The interlude sequence opens "Horse in the Lift"
brightly with banjo, harp, and fiddle while wordless vocals reprise the
main lullaby phrase with lesser instrumental elements toiling with
secondary lines again. The mother's theme evolves out of the brief
action in the middle of "Failed Escape" on dramatic strings, stews in
low strings during the break in action during "Higher," and returns to
wordless vocals to open "Papa and the Ashes," in which woodwinds dance
with the theme's pieces thereafter. The vocal version with lyrics
returns with nice percussive effects in "Memories of Mary," and the
wordless alternative occupies "Let's Go Back" with a little more
suspense before the theme shifts gears into a new action mode in the
cue's latter half. It's fragmented on strings in "Mary's Grave" but
consolidates nicely in its interlude sequence, though it's somewhat dour
on fiddle in "The Devil on Their Side."
The main theme for the mother in
Into the West
is tentative on violins at the outset of "Ossie is Saved" but develops
into the score's secondary family theme with words, and the interlude
sequence of the lullaby is particularly beautiful at this moment. It
opens "Ossie Lives" on fiddle and starts taking a more spirited
personality, the interlude sequence developing further at the cue's end.
That interlude sequence builds out of the score's secondary guitar theme
on penny whistle and voice in "Let Her Go." That secondary family theme
for acoustic guitar is a diversion in the very quiet "The Boys Remember
Mama," and this material is reprised in "Peaceful People" and at the
start of "Let Her Go," cementing its role as a representation of the
rest of the family. The remaining cues in
Into the West consist
of Doyle's rather limp action recordings. The action in "Failed Escape"
almost sounds like B-rate television stock, and a similar basic action
phrase opens "Higher." These aggressive rhythms and slight classicism
prevail in "It's the Possie "in typical, upbeat Doyle attitude, and that
action unsuccessfully strives for panic levels from
Dead Again in
"Boy Under Sea;" the tone is just too sparsely rendered to really work
here. The entire score suffers from this lack of symphonic depth in the
recording, and while the portions with the vocals and whistle can
survive in this environment, the action passages and weightier dramatic
parts are simply too unsatisfying to recommend. There is no doubt that
the performances of the main lullaby by Doyle's sister are the
highlight, particularly when she emotes the vastly superior interlude
sequence, but those moments may seem disappointingly redundant for some
listeners. For casual Doyle enthusiasts, the score's longest cue, "The
Blue Sea and the White Horse," will serve as an adequate representation
of the whole work. The sole album from 1992 offers only 25 minutes of
score material concentrated at its conclusion, the majority of the
product focused on the film's set of decently innocuous but dated pop
songs of no notoriety. On the upside, that CD album has always remained
fairly easy to obtain. Like many of the composer's other early works,
there are fascinatingly enticing ideas at work in this score, but the
execution lacks the power to make the composition soar like it could.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For Patrick Doyle reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.7
(in 40 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.4
(in 26,966 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert includes a note from the composer about the film and score.
