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| Beltrami |
Mimic: (Marco Beltrami) Perhaps the most
fascinating statement ever made by director Guillermo del Toro was one
in which he confessed that his experience making the 1997 movie
Mimic was more frustrating than even the kidnapping of his own
father in Mexico, which happened at roughly the same time. The
production woes involving the film were mostly caused by the distrust of
the young director by producer Bob Weinstein, who constantly imposed his
personal will upon nearly every aspect of the movie. The fundamental
purpose of the plot was at stake in the disagreement, Del Toro seeking
to make a comment about the human ego through artistic merit and
Weinstein looking to reap the benefits of the standard B-rate slasher
techniques that had just been resurrected by his own company. The plot
is one that takes several elements from the
Alien franchise and
places them in the subway system underneath New York City. When a pair
of cocky scientists genetically engineer an insect meant to wipe out the
city's cockroaches, which are spreading a disease that is killing human
children, they succeed by inadvertently equipping their new species with
the capability to evolve at incredibly fast rates. After only three
years, this species has grown to human size and, for the convenient
purposes of a horror film, both feast on humans for their food and can
emulate their looks well enough to cause another layer of panic. Despite
Del Toro's attempts to make the film "beautiful" in its conveyance of
the insects, the final product took the shape of the cheap horror flick
that Weinstein had in mind, and
Mimic was ultimately dismissed by
critics and audiences alike, failing to recoup its $30 million budget in
domestic grosses. Despite its many faults, the movie was an important
stepping stone for composer Marco Beltrami, however, the second in a
long collaboration with the Weinsteins that would launch and sustain his
early career. Moreover,
Mimic was evidence that their prior work
together,
Scream, was not a fluke. While Beltrami's contribution
to
Scream did not flow completely smoothly in production, either,
it did introduce a striking melody and beefy orchestral horror sound to
its franchise, and
Mimic is largely a continuation of that same
general technique. The composer did have to report to both Del Toro and
Weinstein during his creation process, an awkward situation by
Beltrmai's recollection, but his work managed to satisfy both parties.
In particular, the director pushed Beltrami to expose his thematic
portions of
Mimic with straight forward lyricism to emphasize his
interpretation of the beauty of the topic. Not surprisingly, the result
is a score that is quite accessible within its genre.
There will be listeners for whom the horror genre, with
all of its stingers and unpleasant orchestral applications, will never
be appealing on album, but for a novice collector entering the genre for
the first time,
Mimic is a relatively safe place to start. In
these regards, it's much like a Christopher Young horror score,
utilizing orchestra and choir in gothic mode, applying at least one
redemptive, lovely theme, and letting rip with rhythmic sequences of
action for varied percussion that will shake the walls. One of the
reasons Beltrami looks back fondly upon
Mimic is its organic
origins; even though the industry was pretty much computerized by the
late 1990's, this score was a "pencil on paper" product that was
recorded with the entire orchestra playing together and with minimal
electronic manipulation. There are synthetic accents employed in the
score, but in the mass of the score, what you hear is unadulterated
orchestral performances in natural unison. As such, Beltrami was able to
orchestrate much of the music himself, exploring a variety of clicking
sounds meant to emulate the language and other noises of the insect
species. Starting in "Release the Judas," he teases out several
percussive techniques that will eventually dominate the later action
sequences. A crispness to the orchestral performances is further
evidence of the organic nature of the recording, with much of the score
resembling
Species and other equivalent Young works, especially
by the last forty seconds of "Fleeing Terror," which is almost a pure
homage to the horror master's style. There is really only one primary
theme in
Mimic, but Beltrami manipulates it so well that it
applies to nearly any circumstance in the picture. Its grandiose
performance at the height of "Main Titles" dissolves to melodramatic
dread in "Children's Hospital." It survives to become the subject of a
pretty flute performance in "I'll Go" and a duo of sublime, easily tonal
presentations in "Reunited" and "End Credits," the former featuring
brass counterpoint of Jerry Goldsmith resemblance and the latter
resounding with immense choral accompaniment. The score does access
cliches at times, including the boy soprano right at the start
(seemingly an ominous twist on Graeme Revell's concurrent usage in
The Saint) and slashing string, exploding brass hits for stingers
in the central portion of the score. Still, there are enough accessible
highlights in
Mimic to recommend the score to non-horror film
music collectors. The original Varèse Sarabande commercial album
contained the score's highlights and an average rock song, but the
label's 2011 limited and expanded run of 1,000 copies (which quickly
sold out) of the score alone contains several important thematic
additions and noticeably improved sound quality. This rare album is a
necessity in any Beltrami collection, best representing one of the
composer's top horror efforts.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
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| Bias Check: |
For Marco Beltrami reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.73
(in 26 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 2.79
(in 17,229 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert of the 1997 Varèse album contains notes from both the
director and composer. The 2011 limited Varèse product's insert features
extensive information about the score and film.
