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| Zimmer |
The Last Days: (Hans Zimmer/Nathan Wang) A
respected 1998 documentary bankrolled in part by Steven Spielberg,
The Last Days was a project of the Survivors of the Shoah Visual
History Foundation at the University of Southern California. It
assembled a group of Nazi concentration camp survivors from World War
II, along with American soldiers and a German doctor familiar with the
camps, to tell their stories against the backdrop of academic discussion
using photos and video footage. The interviews with seven survivors are
the central core of the documentary. The resulting film won widespread
critical acclaim and triumphed to earn an Academy Award, eventually
picked up by Netflix for a remastered presentation in 2021 on its
streaming service. The film became a target for Holocaust deniers, and
one in particular not only assaulted the lead woman featured in this
film but produced his own documentary refuting the stories in
The
Last Days, additionally suing the filmmakers along the way. The
movie's longevity in public interest speaks for itself, though, and it
is a point of interest for film music collectors because of the
involvement of Hans Zimmer in its original score. The composer was at
the height of his career by the late 1990's, but he still managed to
take a few assignments of lesser notoriety as they related to his German
homeland. In the case of
The Last Days, his primary collaborator
was Nathan Wang, whose prolific career in television and film music for
the B-rate project variety had included some World War II documentary
work just prior to this assignment. Wang and Zimmer were never regular
collaborators, making
The Last Days a unique pairing for them,
and Wang was largely responsible for arranging and orchestrating this
score after contributing additional music from Zimmer's framework. For
Zimmer, the assignment came at about the same time as his music for the
1998 documentary,
The Third Reich (in Color), and listeners will
note the same general demeanor at work in both scores, especially as it
relates to the darker portions here.
The composer wasn't as comfortable writing blatantly
Jewish music for the topic of their suffering was were Jerry Goldsmith
and Lee Holdridge during their careers. As such, there is not much
inherently Eastern European Jewish convention at work in this music, but
it's in "Innocence" and the related rhythms on clarinet in "Returning."
A vocal performance of a traditional tune in "Shabbat" is provided at
the forefront of the mix, too. Zimmer does apply stereotypical Jewish
instrumentation to the score for
The Last Days, most obviously in
the favoring of strings and clarinet. The entire score is helmed by an
orchestra of strings and woodwinds, with piano contributing at times.
There are times when the synthesizers do betray the soundscape,
especially in the later cues of the story. Not much else factors into
the group, though, a lack of brass and percussion leaving concepts of
dread to low winds and strings much like in
The Third Reich (in
Color). A small children's choir is also credited for the score, but
it makes no significant impact. A fairly tight thematic narrative in the
music follows the story, one theme extending through the whole film
while two others concentrate on the early darkness and late redemption
but never overlap or meet. The main theme for the Edith character is
representative of all the stories in the documentary, its pair of
ascending four-note phrases developing into an elongated, dramatic
secondary sequence. Heard at 0:52 into "The Last Days Suite" on low
strings and building to more dramatic higher strings, this theme
transitions to a solo horn following the suite's heightened activity at
4:18, leading to multiple lush renditions with nice counterpoint at 5:07
for the full ensemble. An elongated form of this theme helms the vocal
line at 0:18 into "Main Title Theme," and the first notes inform but
don't fully guide the waltz formalities on strings in "Prosperity." The
main Edith theme turns dark on solemn strings in "Occupation," fighting
the angry chopping later in the cue, and extends quietly out of the
occupation theme early in "The Arrow Cross" before shifting to sad,
lonely plucking later. The idea fights off the occupation theme at 0:19
into "Separation" and is reduced to tortured fragments in
"Auschwitz."
The primary performance of the leading theme in
The
Last Days comes in "Edith's Theme," where a solo electronic wind
over piano at 0:15 eventually yields to secondary phrasing on cello over
a lush string bed; the primary phrases reveal their purpose as a longer
line in the latter half of the cue. The main theme then builds out of
the remembrance theme on clarinet in the last two minutes of "Final
Theme" for the end credits. The aforementioned occupation theme is where
the similarities to Zimmer's
The Third Reich (in Color) really
come into play. This ominously churning, five-note sequence around key
often starts cues, and it also does so on distorted bassoon and thumping
piano in "The Last Days Suite." The idea opens "Main Title Theme" and
"Deportation" on low woodwinds while deep strings take it to begin "The
Arrow Cross." The theme is adapted into a brighter variant in
"Wallenberg" before returning to original form at the cue's end. It is
expressed with a little more power from bass strings in "Separation,"
and solo clarinet opens "Survival" with a stuttering form of the theme.
From there, the score shifts to its remembrance theme, the closing
portions of the score using this idea to offer its first true warmth.
This new string melody is introduced in "Liberation" and carries over to
"Remembrance," but it sounds badly synthetic in the latter. That melody
is extended in "Life Today" with nice layering of phrases near the end,
and the idea refines itself to sophistication on string quartet to open
"Final Theme" for the credits. The somewhat artificial sound to some of
these later cues is a detriment to the whole, and the emotional tone of
the work is so restrained from the start that many listeners will find
the whole disengaging. It's a completely functional score, but Zimmer
sometimes struggles to emote passion in these circumstances, assuming
the solitary nature of the performances will alone suggest their
importance and tug at the heart strings. His music doesn't always
succeed in that strategy, and
The Last Days is only a marginally
effective and forgettable product as a result. Originally released only
as a 47-minute promotional CD by the Shoah Foundation itself, the score
has been widely passed around by Zimmer's collectors. But don't expect
it to deliver the emotional punch that the likes of Holdridge and other
veteran composers in this genre were delivering at the same time.
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| Bias Check: |
For Hans Zimmer reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.85
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