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| Goldsmith |
Leviathan: (Jerry Goldsmith) In retrospect, 1989
was the crowning year of underwater suspense and horror. Among others,
DeepStar Six,
Leviathan, and
The Abyss all were
released that year, perhaps due to some level of advancement in
underwater filming technologies. The premise of
Leviathan starts
with promise but disintegrates into a poorly executed combination of
Alien and
The Thing that dozens of other films had already
attempted before. An underwater mining crew (consisting of a decent cast
of B-rate character actors for the time) searching for precious metals
16,000 feet down is testy as it nears the end of its 90-day shift.
Luckily, the group discovers the mysterious wreck of a scuttled Russian
ship named Leviathan in the great depths. They plunder various goodies
from the ship unaware that among their discoveries is a mutant gene
experiment that was likely the demise of Leviathan. The film stumbles
badly at this point, especially by the time a few of the crew are
transformed into monsters wearing rubber suits and do all the obligatory
maiming and senseless killing that films like
Leviathan require.
At some point, you stop caring if anyone survives and appreciate the
fact that the film has a good sense of humor about its own failings, and
luckily the $24 million sunk into the production elements of the film
was allocated to good use in sets, special effects, and the hiring of
Jerry Goldsmith for the original score. While
The Abyss was only
the cinematic success of the this sub-genre of films in 1989,
Goldsmith's score for
Leviathan gives Alan Silvestri's choral
work for the more famous film a run for its money. The composer's
involvement with
Leviathan was no surprise given that he and
director George P. Cosmatos had collaborated with great success on
First Blood. Goldsmith had also proven himself more than worthy
of assignments in the monster and science fiction genres in the late
1970's and 1980's, with everything from
Alien to
The Swarm
under his belt. The task for the composer here channeled
Alien,
but Goldsmith couldn't resist the temptation of a more vibrant ensemble
personality and the addressing of the underwater setting as an influence
in his music. On the surface,
Leviathan is very average Goldsmith
work that won't likely earn many firm supporters, but a handful of
unique additions to the score help it stand above the substantial mass
of other similar works from the composer.
The deliberate opening titles are one example of where
Leviathan excels, with Goldsmith establishing an elegant and
slowly building theme for strings over broad brass as counterpoint and
an array of whale sound effects for good measure. What follows in the
rest of the score is a classic study in Goldsmith suspense, though two
tracks distinguish themselves as enjoyable listening exceptions. An
affirming piano-led theme of diminished romantic reflection makes a
short appearance in "One of Us" and a victorious end titles cue gallops
with almost the Western spirit and thematic bounce of Bruce Broughton's
Silverado. While out of place given its openly optimistic
personality, the variation of theme in "A Lot Better," along with the
intrigue of the opening cue, is worth the price of the album despite the
reminders it will inevitably give you of Stu Phillips' famous theme from
"Battlestar Galactica." But rather than providing bland suspense music
for the majority of the middle sections (a format Goldsmith followed in
projects such as
The River Wild and a host of others during this
period), he sustains substantial power and rhythmic development in many
of the action explosions. The orchestral presence is powerful and
brooding, with one brass motif after another striking you while staccato
strings chop mercilessly above them. The true point of interest in
Leviathan remains the host of sound effects that Goldsmith
employs. The 1980's were his time of prime electronic experimentation,
and in an environment as other-worldly as the bottom of the ocean (and
with the obvious need to frighten the viewer), Goldsmith's foreign
atmosphere in
Leviathan stretches from the benign whale calls to
the harshest slashing and backwards-mixed effects (heard in the
outstanding "Can We Fix It" cue) used in, coincidentally, the film
Dark City. The substance of the horror underscore is not quite
the quality of
The Swarm, but it puts the similarly conceived
ideas in
Deep Rising to shame. In the film, Goldsmith's score is
featured with great force, prominently mixed into the DVD's primary
two-channel Dolby Digital soundtrack. While many casual listeners may
write off
Leviathan as a merely average Goldsmith action and
horror romp, it surprises you with its persistence of attitude and
quality of enthusiastic performances, especially during its highlighting
bookend cues. The original pressing of the album was a rather amusing
example of the extremely poor and difficult-to-read packaging on some of
Varèse Sarabande's early CD releases, but don't let such trifles
restrict you from giving this often underrated score another chance.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.29
(in 115 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.32
(in 146,964 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
