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| Glennie-Smith |
The Man in the Iron Mask: (Nick Glennie-Smith) It
had been nearly twenty years since the last of Alexandre Dumas' novels
about the famed Musketeers was translated to the big screen. The 1998
film
The Man in the Iron Mask represented screenwriter Randall
Wallace's directorial debut; his only other film at the helm over the
following ten years would be
We Were Soldiers. His own screenplay
based on Dumas' material would fail in its attempt to squeeze so many
plot elements into one film, and with its poor character development and
relative lack of action,
The Man in the Iron Mask would travel
only as far as its five major male leads could take it. Ultimately, that
journey wouldn't last long, and part of the film's lack of longevity was
due to critics' bashing of the film's modern edge. Wallace was keen on
bringing that updated style to 1662 France, and one member of his
production team who was thoroughly modern was composer Nick
Glennie-Smith. A graduate of Hans Zimmer's Media Ventures team,
Glennie-Smith had arranged and contributed music for a variety of
Zimmer's mid-1990's projects. His most notable role would be in the 1996
score for
The Rock, and his was involvement in that score that
would land him in
The Man in the Iron Mask by Wallace's request.
The assignment would immediately raise eyebrows, for Glennie-Smith was
obviously one of the last people to be associated with period music at a
time when Patrick Doyle, George Fenton, James Newton Howard, and David
Hirschfelder were dominating the genre with superior results. Despite
suggestions by Glennie-Smith that he looked to Handel and Haydn (among
other classical composers) for inspiration in composing this score, any
competent pair of veteran film music ears will, by contradiction,
identify the inspiration as none other than Zimmer. This score is
nothing more than an extension of
The Lion King and
The
Rock, with some poor attempts at baroque dance music that sounds
anything other than genuine. Nevertheless, the important aspect of
The Man in the Iron Mask to keep in mind was that the masculine
sound of Hans Zimmer's
Crimson Tide was extremely popular at the
time, and as such, this score was greeted with great enthusiasm by
listeners wanting to hear the power of
The Rock without the
wailing electric guitars.
In retrospect,
The Man in the Iron Mask is far
less satisfying. Golden Age film music collectors identified the
problems with the score immediately in 1998, and with the stagnant
Zimmer sound bothering some of the younger generation in the following
years, scores like this one are simply too repetitive. Its themes are
extremely simplistic in their harmonic progressions. The primary theme,
heard boldly in "Surrounded" and a few places thereafter, is a simple
re-working of the title theme for
The Rock, with most of the
instrumentation left intact. Casual ears, in fact, will not be able to
discern any difference between the opening tracks of the two scores. A
secondary theme that dominates "The Ascension" shares significant chord
progressions with the "wondrous" theme from
The Lion King. A
flute theme introduced at the end of "All for One" is almost identical
in structure and performance to the similar Irish-styled theme in
The
Rock. Remaining themes in
The Man in the Iron Mask will all
raise comparisons to other Zimmer scores, including fragments from
Backdraft. Most striking is the use of the electronic bass,
guitars, synthetic keyboarding, and trademark deep male chorus in a
period film; this instrumentation, while combined well with a
traditional ensemble (closer in style to
The Lion King's combo
sound), will simply not suffice for the 17th Century for some listeners.
Glennie-Smith and Wallace contemplated licensing symphonic performances
of Handel and Haydn for the handful of cues in the score that simply
could not use portions of
The Rock, but Glennie-Smith decided in
the end to attempt recreations himself. This was an unfortunate move,
and his lack of style in his baroque imitations causes three almost
laughable cues on album. On the positive side, however, Glennie-Smith
did indeed take that powerful and modern Zimmer style of action and
package it into one of the most easily digestible forms until Zimmer
would do so again himself in
King Arthur several years later. If
you can turn off your brain and forget the score's constantly derivative
nature, it's a surprisingly enjoyable listening experience. It may be
dumb, but it accomplishes what Wallace wanted. Over its 50 minutes on
album, it will provide a "best of" compilation of ideas from
The
Rock, with filler material that is sufficient outside of the baroque
attempts.
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