: (Eric
Serra) Among the plethora of films made about the French legend of Saint
Joan, Luc Besson's major 1999 production stands as one of the most
technically impressive. With an international supporting cast and
production values on par with a blockbuster film,
was Besson's attempt to break into Oscar
territory. Unfortunately, several fatal flaws with the picture burned
its chances of success and, as a side note, the film marked the end of
the marriage between Besson and lead actress Milla Jovovich. The role of
Joan proved too complicated for the perennial tough girl, and her
lackluster performance combined with poor plot pacing, questionable
interpretations of history, uninteresting battle sequences, and a truly
troublesome score by Eric Serra caused
to
ultimately fail. Serra's work on the production remains a curiosity to
this day. Although he attempted to assemble a massive group of capable
orchestral and choral performers for the score, leading them in music
meant to have the scope of any historical epic, the end result is
muddled and aimless. While in a technical sense it's easiest to point to
the total lack of consistency when trying to pinpoint exactly why this
score doesn't click, there remains the intriguing possibility that Serra
was simply out of his league for this production. Being limited mostly
to the pop and rock genres, Serra's talents with an orchestra were far
less than a host of others even in the French film scoring scene. As
such, it's not surprising that Serra managed to collect all of the base
elements that an epic "knights in armor" genre score requires (heavy,
melodramatic strings, large choral sequences, clanging chimes, etc.),
but in the execution of the score, he lost sight of that genre.
Resorting far too often to performing himself on percussion and
keyboards, he even inserted sampled effects completely incongruous with
the era. In many places, it's functional music, but it is neither
intelligent nor enjoyable. Its noteworthy cues of orchestral and choral
exploration are often separated by long moments of nothingness, yielding
an equally frustrating album.
The music you hear in
The Messenger is what you
get when you strip all the passion out of a concept like Basil
Poledouris'
Les Misérables and perform it with the same
lack of engagement or enthusiasm that restrained Gabriel Yared's
The
English Patient. Serra's action sequences fall into two categories:
those that are heavily reliant on traditional material (which is
credited in general by Serra) and original, pounding simplicity that is
what you get if you take Jerry Goldsmith's
First Knight and strip
it of any sense of heroism, style, or hefty, historical importance. For
a film about conquest, desire, religion, and anger, Serra's music for
The Messenger has very little drive or intensity. It murmurs, it
clangs, it rumbles, and it trickles, but never does it unleash the epic
scope of importance or the character development that lies at the heart
of the story. So much of the score ditches the orchestra in favor of
bland electronics that significant lengths are barely audible and,
unfortunately, incredibly boring. Serra opens the score with his
troubled and introverted title theme in "Talk to Him," a theme that
reportedly strongly resembles the 1918 opera Gianni Schicchi by Giacomo
Puccini, and uses it in five or six key cues throughout the work (as
well as part of the pop song at the end). It is difficult to obtain any
satisfaction from this theme because of its poorly orchestrated
renderings. It exists at an odd balance between harmonic structure and
dissonant shades, leaving little to be excited about during the opening
cue on album or the dozen cues to follow. During this large section of
the album, Serra programs his synthesizers to produce quiet, electronic
grinding and pounding sounds, often with very little accompaniment by
the orchestra, and with pacing that couldn't compete with a snail,
you'll be desperate for the more explosive crescendos in the product's
latter half to save the listening experience. There are times when
Serra's softer cues are downright obnoxious, not in volume, but because
he isn't afraid to take samples of backwards recordings better left for
contemporary settings and mix them into this score's forefront.
Conversely,
The Messenger does offer a few
momentous performances by a full, adult chorus in harmony with the
orchestra. The slow crescendo in "Rex Coronatur" is perhaps the
highlight of the album, with a beautiful variation on the title theme
during its conclusion. Four pivotal cues later in the score, however,
are not completely original. For the heaviest lifting, Serra seems to
have done what Hans Zimmer would do the following year with
Gladiator, taking pieces of Strauss, Wagner, Orff, among others,
and at times quoting them almost verbatim. In particular, the finale of
"Angelus In Medio Ignis" is a tiresome, slight altering of Carmina
Burana. It makes you wonder why Serra and Besson didn't just license the
actual piece. The original action sequences are unenthusiastic and
thematically uninspiring. The climax of the middle section of the album
is represented by "The Tourelles," which features a blend of
non-descript, symphonic and electronic hits pounding over and over and
over again, with little interesting variance. The tone of this cue is
close to the awkward balance of similar mixes in
The Fifth
Element. These action cues are big, but far from epic. Whether
dealing with a traditional battle sequence or a religious source-like
situation,
The Messenger is lackadaisical about its own subject
matter. The electronics detract from the whole with a constantly distant
pounding or droning to be heard in almost any cue. These overlays cannot
be a substitute for intelligent orchestrations, and overall, they are a
primary reason why the album will be a major disappointment for many.
That album hits rock bottom with the pop song at the end. Co-written by
Serra, "My Heart Calling" proves that Serra's title theme for the film
is so poor a melody that it doesn't translate to lyrics very well (and
the voice-overs in its latter half are downright annoying). This entire
product underwhelms. The previous Besson/Jovovich/Serra collaboration,
The Fifth Element, thrived on its creativity, cultural
innovation, and a remarkable knack for capturing the spirit of the
film's genre. Unfortunately, Serra's music for
The Messenger,
even with its grand size and choral adaptations, lacks any consistency,
and, perhaps most importantly, a heart and soul.
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