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| Copeland |
Little Boy Blue: (Stewart Copeland) If you've ever
felt like your family is too dysfunctional for you to handle, then you
need to watch
Little Boy Blue and realize that things could be
far, far worse. A young man in a small Texas town comes from a trailer
and an abusive father, choosing not to go with his wealthy girlfriend to
college so that he can stay behind and protect his mother and two
younger siblings from his father. Before you think that there's anything
normal about the twisted plot of
Little Boy Blue, imagine that
the boy is having sex with the mother, an older woman comes into the
story as an avenging angel and blows everything away, and the father had
his penis blown off in Vietnam, so how exactly could he have three
children anyway? And that's not even spoiling any of the more
interesting twists of the story. Director Antonio Tibaldi seems to have
thought that a decent showing at the arthouse festivals could propel
Little Boy Blue to mainstream interest, but all he managed to
produce was a wickedly disturbing film that critics crushed and
audiences appropriately avoided. Given that the story exists in some
sort of brutal haze, it's no surprise that Stewart Copeland's score for
the picture is the kind of impressionistic music that leaves you
thinking you've been clubbed in the head by something... or maybe serves
well as the kind of sounds you hear in your head during a hangover.
Copeland is the former drummer for the rock band "The Police" and has
written several similar scores for the likes of Oliver Stone and Francis
Ford Coppola, proving that his pop roots have appeal when directors and
producers want a "cool, but different" sound for their films. For
Little Boy Blue, Stewart would actually provide a minimal amount
of score, with the film utilizing several songs and silence over key
sequences. With an underscore like this, it wouldn't be hard to miss it.
In fact, it's one of those cases where the songs are for more
interesting.
Copeland's score is completely devoid of any
development beyond the overall, hazy impression of the film's
otherworldliness. It's a completely synthesized score, with meandering
keyboarding mixed with occasional light rhythm samples, an electric
guitar, and a solo female voice overlaid several times. There is no
thematic concept outside of the female vocals, which perform protracted
Enya-like themes in slightly distorted layers. These progressions have
faint similarities to historical American songs, though this resemblance
is probably a coincidence. On the surface, these vocal cues, especially
"Kids Catch Fish" and "End Titles," are enjoyable in their new age
tendencies, but the more disturbing question about Copeland's score
exists in its strange attitude towards its own subject matter. Other
than some slight high-range electronic dissonance in "Ray Pushes Up,"
there's really nothing unpleasant about the score for
Little Boy
Blue. The music provides absolutely no dimension to the
psychological horrors of the film, making you wonder if the light,
enjoyable tones of the score were some horrible mistake by the composer
or actually a request from the filmmakers. The score was released by the
Sonic Images label at roughly the same time as Mark Snow's
Disturbing
Behavior, which featured a score seemingly far more emotionally in
tune with the disastrous and hideous social situations of both films. On
album, there is only 11 minutes of Copeland's score existing after 21
minutes of songs, any of which will overshadow the score's most vibrant
moments. The songs are an odd, but listenable collection of country
western and old rock and jazz, adequately representing the location of
the story. But they provide no emotional insight into the terrible
occurences on screen either, leaving the
Little Boy Blue album as
one of the most truly curious, disconnected soundtracks of recent times.
Because it's easily listenable, the album avoids the lowest rating, but
Copeland's score is as devoid of effective dramatic appeal as one can
get.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
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The insert notes contain a plot summary of the film and a very short summary of Copeland's career.
