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FILMTRACKS.COM
PRINTER-FRIENDLY VIEW 
Review of Minority Report (John Williams)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you have no qualms about John Williams looking for
inspiration in the noir scores of yesteryear for a futuristic thriller,
even if that technique yields music less interesting than it could have
been.
Avoid it... especially on the longer album option if you purchase Williams' scores simply for their typical harmonic resonance, because Minority Report is short on thematic appeal and long on dissonant suspense.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
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. ***
TRACK LISTINGS:
2002 Dreamworks Album:
Total Time: 73:55
2019 La-La Land Album: Total Time: 121:04
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert of the 2002 Dreamworks album includes the usual short note from Spielberg
but nothing else about the score or film. That of the 2019 La-La Land set contains the same
note and lengthy commentary about the score and film. The Spielberg note is as follows:
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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from Minority Report are Copyright © 2002, 2019, Dreamworks Records, La-La Land Records and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 6/14/02 and last updated 7/19/20. |
