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| Poledouris |
For Love of the Game: (Basil Poledouris) There are
many things for baseball fans to admire about Sam Raimi's first
mainstream motion picture,
For Love of the Game. Its loyalty to
an authentic game is exhibited in its visuals, its star, Kevin Costner,
is a tested on-screen veteran of the game, and announcers Vin Scully and
Steve Lyons have familiar voices. At its core, though,
For Love of
the Game is a love story. At the end of a long career with the
dismal Detroit Tigers, Costner's 40-year-old starting pitcher is forced
into retirement after the last game of the 1999 season. While he
reflects upon his life and his lost love during one more outing against
the New York Yankees, he flirts with a perfect game, leading to an
opportunity for salvation on and off the diamond. The main detriment of
the movie, aside from endless scenes outside of the white chalk lines,
is the ridiculously slow pacing of the game play. Ironically, the
story's format wouldn't have been remotely possible if was set after the
institution of the pitch clock in the game years later to speed things
up. When considering the movie's music, Raimi had a strong, lasting
collaboration with composer Danny Elfman, and it would have been
interesting to hear the composer's take on a blend of contemporary
romance and the American pastime. More qualified might have been James
Newton Howard, a mainstay of Costner's films during this period. The
assignment went, however, to Basil Poledouris, a smart choice because of
his lengthy history of writing personal scores with a touch of
Americana. It is exactly that type of score that Poledouris provided for
For Love of the Game, and it turned out to be the composer's
final mainstream effort before illness and troubles in his personal life
concluded his artistic contributions. Costner himself had forgiven
Poledouris for backing out of his assignment on
Dances With
Wolves, which everyone soon realized was a fateful decision for the
composer. It eventually became clear that the duo of
Les
Misérables and
For Love of the Game were the last of
the composer's truly engaging works. The latter score is far less
spectacular, but it speaks to the roots of Poledouris' habit of reaching
to the heart of characters on screen and provided them with
appropriately warm music, not to mention a few throwbacks to his folksy
inclinations.
Comparisons to heavily praised baseball-related scores
like Randy Newman's
The Natural or James Horner's
Field of
Dreams are tempting, but while
For Love of the Game is a film
with baseball as its narrative inspiration, the score is really about
one man's recollections about his life. It's an upbeat, gracious, and
easy-going work with a blend of contemporary rhythms and orchestral
fortitude. Poledouris' knack for brilliantly balancing the organic and
synthetic for a character score is legendary, and he's on his game here.
A primary theme dominates the entire score, a heroic and expansive
representation of perseverance in the game by the climax of "Last Pitch"
while sensitive and tingling in the flashbacks of "Relationship
Montage." A secondary theme for the personal relationships also mingles
throughout, taking a far more restrained approach. The extremely affable
"Main Theme" suite covers both of these bases, and in the solo woodwind
renditions of the thematic material, Poledouris' music sounds remarkably
similar in its slight stature to
Kimberly the following year.
Neither theme is really memorable, though. The resonance of the main
baseball theme isn't as deep as some listener may desire, but it serves
its purpose. Slight country and rock rhythms, complete with percussion
suitable for an elevator speaker, are necessarily accessible though
somewhat generic and bland. The score's outward confrontation moments
pull hard towards a bluesy influence, and "Tuttle Knockdown" and "Gus
Hits" may be challenging distractions from the otherwise more restrained
atmosphere. The electric guitars in these cues are unacceptably
obnoxious despite the intended abrasive personality; far better are the
performances of the instrument when it accompanies the full orchestral
ensemble. An acoustic guitar serves as the grounding element of the
score's personality, strumming along with the composer's usual,
upper-range synthetic effects and producing the same family-friendly,
comfortable atmosphere as
Free Willy. The piano is also used to a
similar end in "Jane's Home" and "The Decision," both of which are as
endearing as they are smooth. The latter cue features an impressive full
ensemble variation on the theme, with piano adding elegant counterpoint.
The mix of the solo instruments with the ensemble is notable, and the
tingling electronics are, as typical in Poledouris' scores, well
balanced in their use of the full sonic spectrum.
The finale cue at the culmination of the baseball game,
"Last Pitch," is worthy of some discussion on its own, for its style
totally defies the restrained demeanor of the remainder of the score.
Three minutes of the cue adds an adult chorus to the mix of orchestra,
electric and acoustic guitars, and synthetic rhythms. The resulting
repetitions of the main theme, along with some generally pleasing chord
progressions of massive scope in between, would be suitable for an
adventure film of far wider implications. The momentous proportions of
this choral cue are a surprising conclusion to an otherwise humble
score, creating an outstanding listening experience on album but perhaps
overplaying its hand with a dose of religious importance in the film. In
terms of sports film music,
For Love of the Game does not achieve
the same amount of inspirational spirit that Jerry Goldsmith was able to
conjure for other stories, though nothing in either
Hoosiers or
Rudy tries to generate the pious power of "Last Pitch." The
triumphant explosion in that cue is a highlight of Poledouris' entire
career despite its somewhat awkward, bombastic positioning in the scene.
The score as a whole relies upon its minority of truly gorgeous
orchestral contributions to survive. But survive it does, and that
melodic portion, even if slightly anonymous, will be a necessarily
inclusion for any Poledouris collector. At the time of the film's
release, a fifteen-minute promotional album of Poledouris' score was
floated in response to a commercial song-only album that featured only
one small suite of the very best music from the score. This promo
fetched hundreds of dollars in blazing online bidding, and these buyers
must have felt silly when Varèse Sarabande eventually offered 33
minutes of the score on an album later in the year. Ironically, it's one
of the rare circumstances in which a brief Varèse album of the
era would have been better if a tad shorter, omitting the irritatingly
rough blues and country tones in "Tuttle Knockdown" and "Gus Hits."
Still, the presentation was well condensed to the highlights and a
pleasant surprise for those disappointed with Poledouris'
Mickey Blue
Eyes earlier in 1999. The label expanded the score to a 78-minute
presentation in 2024 that languishes in much of the additional, subdued
material. More oddly, though, is a very restricted soundscape for the
score; it sounds underwater and flat for its entire length on this
product. For most listeners, the shorter album will more than suffice.
In either case, the score stands as a bittersweet mainstream goodbye to
a favorite composer in his waning years.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For Basil Poledouris reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.54
(in 35 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.3
(in 35,217 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert of the 1999 album includes no extra information about the
score or film. That of the 2024 expansion includes details about both.
