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| Williams |
Minority Report: (John Williams) After the crushing
critical failure of
A.I. Artificial Intelligence the previous
year, director Steven Spielberg turned his sights on another futuristic
story about humanity but this time rooted in the film noir genre of
old-time detective thrillers. Not long into the future, a gifted handful
of people can predict when crime is about to happen, allowing police to
foil the event before it happens. The plot of
Minority Report
questions what would happen if one of the lead investigators is himself
predicted of committing murder, sending him on a chase that may
inevitably cause the murder in the first place. It's a circular
examination of fate, destiny, and free will that makes the audience
think as much as it had with
A.I. but without the horrendous
emotional baggage of abandonment and extinction. For Spielberg, the
positive response to
Minority Report, despite the film's failure
to achieve classic status, helped solve some of the ills caused by
A.I., though working in the opposite direction was composer John
Williams. There was no letdown in sight for Williams at the start of
2002, with sequels for the
Star Wars and
Harry Potter
franchises in the near future and an
Indiana Jones score
perpetually on the horizon. A standout score for the maestro in the
previous five years had indeed been
A.I., a work that accentuated
the ills of that picture but, in so doing, produced a beautiful
listening experience on its own. The half of its length that accompanies
the disillusioned vision of a bleak future of technology and humanity
serves as a close cousin to
Minority Report, for which Williams
was asked to compose yet another psychologically complex score about a
disturbing future scenario. In most productions, and especially when
working with Spielberg, Williams is involved with the project from the
very beginning of shooting. In the case of
Minority Report,
however, Williams was shown the picture after it was nearly completed,
allowing him to fully experience the psychology of the chase realized
throughout the story. He also composed this score immediately after
finishing
Star Wars: Attack of the Clones and amongst several
notable public appearances, allowing him little preparation time for the
Spielberg film.
In the end, though, Williams managed to produce a
well-rounded suspense score for
Minority Report, with several
consistent elements that weave in and out of the work in its entirety.
It is a very cohesive score in the sense that it predictably reapplies
motifs and builds upon largely organic instrumentation throughout its
length until it finally releases all of its emotional weight at the end.
Whether the score will be listenable beyond the confines of the movie
for most listeners, however, is another matter. Spielberg has mentioned
that
Minority Report is a film noir throwback to the kind of
suspenseful mysteries for which Bernard Herrmann scored late in the
Golden Age of Hollywood. With the disharmony and tumultuous rhythms of
Williams' score for this film, you can hear that the composer was
attempting to emulate the same kind of unnerving suspense in grand
fashion as Herrmann succeeded in accomplishing time and time again. (The
"Spyders" cue is obviously saturated with Herrmann's mannerisms.)
Functionally speaking, Williams does succeed in producing a solid blend
of ambient discomfort and brazen action, but
Minority Report
proves as well that Williams still isn't the master of noir thrill that
Herrmann was. Williams' successful suspense scores follow a formula that
boils and churns rather than outwardly frightens a listener with layers
of dissonance, and that churning sense of unease is only occasionally
engaged well in this work, as at the end of "Confronting Lamar"
("Psychic Truth"). This is a rather surprising observation to make about
Williams, because it's so rare that he fails to accomplish any goal he
sets his mind to in the Bronze or Digital Ages. The composer's
dominating talents at melody always manage to influence even his darkest
of his suspense scores. In
A.I., in fact, the operatic moments of
thematic expression of love will far outweigh the action cues in most
listeners' memories. The same will be so with
Minority Report,
though the moments of tonality in the last cues of the score are so
brief that there will be many listeners who will reject it simply for
its mostly abrasive nature. The suspense and chase cues may be
functional, but they're quite unremarkable when compared to similar
Star Wars prequel material. There are some occasional highlights
in these passages, led by "Anderton's Great Escape," but these moments
become lost amongst the lengthy cues of soft, discomforting string
meanderings that paint a relatively unhappy picture of America in
2054.
The theme that Williams creates for the primary family
of characters is touching though highly restrained. First heard on its
own courtesy a solo horn at about the three-minute mark in "Minority
Report," this idea is expanded upon by piano in short suite format in
"Sean's Theme" before understandably providing an eerie ambience in the
middle sequence of "Leo Crow... The Confrontation." The intended noir
elegance of the theme's rising progressions of hope and redemption hints
at the appeal of Williams' other highly personal dramatic themes, and it
is allowed to flourish in the final resolution cue of
Minority
Report. "That surprises a lot of people," explains Williams about
the ending. "We've been in a dark, futuristic mode and then,
unexpectedly, there's this lyricism reflecting a sense of innocence and
hope." By the time the listener has reached the final cue, he or she has
already been introduced to several highly engaging cues that shatter the
quiet intensity of the first half of the score. Dominating the "Minority
Report" suite is Williams' frantic theme for the pre-crime unit; the
idea doubles as the main theme of the picture for some listeners, though
its applications may not be frequent enough to considered as such. In
the narrative, the idea is heard initially at 0:31 into "Creating the
Red Balls" and receives an engaging and robust performance at the end of
"Saving the Eye." Williams will recognize this idea as a descendent of
similar suspense motifs in
JFK and mostly
Jurassic Park.
The rather rambling nature of the theme may not allow it to register
with most casual listeners. An off-shoot of this idea informs the
score's one true horror motif for the government's "spyders." The suite
doesn't do much justice to the exotic and ethereal theme for the
"precogs" and instead emphasizes Williams' singular "A New Beginning"
theme. Amounting to less than two minutes in the film, this redemptive
concluding piece was expanded by Williams to form a longer and somewhat
deceiving representation of the score. It would have been fantastic to
hear this theme develop directly out of the "precog" theme instead.
Throughout the score, he uses the somewhat ethnically awkward vocals of
a single, altered female soloist to perform an exotic, two-phrase theme
to represent the visions of these characters. Sharing characteristics
with the composer's theme for Lord Voldemort in the first two
Harry
Potter scores, this vocalized theme is not as reassuring as related
tones had been in
A.I. but is rather intentionally
foreign-sounding, adding to the discomforting transformation of America
in the latter half of this century.
Just like the harmonica that is electronically altered
in "The Greenhouse Effect" to add even more flavor to the futuristic
setting, the vocals of
Minority Report are electronically
enhanced to create a disturbing though intriguing sound. "The electronic
piece is synched up with the orchestra," Williams states. "So it becomes
a kind of loop that's orchestral but also synthesized. It wafts through
the film." The "Visions of Anne Lively" cue offers the most explicit use
of these vocals, and it is only a pity that Williams did not utilize
these elements to an even greater effect, especially in "A New
Beginning." Using the vocal and electronic effects as an accent to the
orchestral elements is one thing, but building the entire score around
them could have made
Minority Report into a spectacular work. As
it is, this is a score to appreciate in many parts but, ultimately, it's
best placed in the context of the visuals. It lacks the emotional reach
or thematic integrity to stand out as a great effort in Williams'
remarkable career. The original 2002 album's 45-minute presentation is
more than sufficient, stopping short of involving the listener until its
latter stages, and a limited 2019 La-La Land Records expansion to two
CDs struggles mightily to involve the listener. The additional,
technically proficient but cold material passes by without the gripping
depth of emotion that we have come to expect from Williams, and the
interesting references to Herrmann's work and periodic bursts of
riveting action are somewhat diluted by the pleasantly positive finale
meant to satisfy Spielberg's need for hopelessly optimistic Hollywood
endings. The action cues are split apart on the longer album, spreading
out the rhythmically cohesive moments. Only a handful of the chase
sequences are intriguing enough in their construction (with the
incredible "Anderton's Great Escape" leading the way) to play with power
outside of the picture on either album. Ultimately, it is surprising
that Williams didn't create more elaborate or, at least, risk-taking
scores for these futuristic Spielberg films.
A.I. did make use of
instrumentation that he had not been employed the same way before, but
Minority Report is a comparatively conservative effort that
relies on Williams' general orchestral skills rather than branching off
into new territory. This is a shame, because with the talent that the
maestro had displayed on a regular basis, as well as the constraints of
conventional sequel scores, it was disappointing to hear him miss an
opportunity to go off on a wild excursion into the musical unknown. If
the film itself is compared to a pre-crime case, then Williams scored
the present investigation rather than the time and place at which that
crime will eventually take occur.
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