: (Lee Holdridge) Director
Ulrich Edel's miniseries adaptation of Marion Zimmer Bradley's
bestseller takes a different look at the Camelot fable, telling the
story of King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, and Merlin from the
perspective of the tale's female characters. The power struggle existing
between the women behind the spotlight is saturated with pagan aspects
of the story, including a graphic scene of incest, which conservative
groups found offensive. The protests against this TNT miniseries only
served to bring it more attention, and with the help of an accomplished
cast, outstanding sets, and memorable music,
was explosively popular in the summer of 2001. Absent in this rendition
of the legend are the fanfares of brass that have best represented the
genre in feature films, with the story of the women requiring a
different kind of score than the typical Arthurian affair. For several
years already, composer Lee Holdridge had been producing solid scores
for TNT films. Most of these projects, despite their continuous reruns,
faded away into obscurity, and Holdridge's music for them always failed
to merit a commercial album release. In the case of
, however, the show's enormous audience yielded the
possibility of a successful release of Holdridge's Emmy-nominated score,
and that album also achieved rarely seen heights for an orchestral
score. Holdridge's career had, since the late 1980's, remained absent
from mainstream attention. While 80's classics like
are still revered by devoted film score fans,
Holdridge's supporters held out hope that he would once again receive an
assignment which would bring him that much overdue attention.
was undoubtedly that score, though the composer's
continued output for documentaries and made-for-television films
throughout the remainder of the 2000's never managed to reach the same
audience. While many critics attributed the popularity of the music from
to the prominent placement of a Loreena
McKennitt song, the score stands very strongly as an integral element in
the production.
Even the composer's devoted collectors were caught off
guard by the momentous quality of his score for
The Mists of
Avalon. It was, without a doubt, the grandest and most beautiful
score of 2001's first half, foreshadowing many of the elements that
Howard Shore was concurrently working on mixing for his superior
The
Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Holdridge has always
maintained the ability to write compelling themes for his scores, and
his sense for melodrama is superb. In
The Mists of Avalon,
Holdridge finally had the opportunity to project those talents onto a
huge canvas, with a mammoth orchestra, choir, and solo female vocalist,
as well as a story that required a broad range of thematic material. His
score is monumental in scope, theme, and resonance, and to remember that
this is music for a television film makes the work all the more
astounding. To compliment the lush, green visuals of the film, Holdridge
paints a picture with poignant strings, robust brass, and an array of
percussive soloists. Frequent accents of a Celtic nature, both in rhythm
and instrumentation, are integrated into both the score and source-like
dance material. Fans of James Horner's
Braveheart will note some
of the same percussive soloists lending their talents to this score, and
the composition takes advantage of their contributions to an even more
ambitious level. The full ensemble portions were recorded in Bavaria
with members of the Munich Symphony Orchestra, and their performances
are remarkably true to the pagan and vibrant aspects of the composition,
as well as the film's setting. An oversized drum section, highlighted by
a spectacular role for timpani, provides action sequences of a quality
unparalleled in recent years. Only Shore's forthcoming
The Lord of
the Rings could also shift so effortlessly between alluring solo
vocals and rhythmically propulsive and occasionally brutal percussive
passages. The thematic representations in
The Mists of Avalon are
about as diverse, though Holdridge's statements of his ideas are true to
the straight forward style that has defined his career. There is very
little (if any) dissonance of significant length to be heard in this
material.
Due credit needs to be given to the licensing of the
already well-known Loreena McKennitt song "The Mystic's Dream," which
first appeared on her 1994 platinum-selling album "The Mask and Mirror."
For avid film score collectors and movie fans, you might recall that the
most famous use of that song was alongside James Horner's highly
controversial score for the sex thriller
Jade in 1995. While
McKennitt's soft Celtic tones may have sounded frightfully out of place
in that wretched film, it is a perfect match for
The Mists of
Avalon, repeating several times throughout the film and setting a
seductive, yet slightly ominous atmosphere for the story. There is irony
in the fact that both productions include pagan sex rituals that involve
masks, potentially tarnishing "The Mystic's Dream" with an unnecessary
stigma for some listeners. At any rate, the McKennitt song, placed at
the beginning of the album, was the primary and obvious selling point of
the product, despite the fact that Holdridge's music is a very strong
match, both in quality and style. To coordinate his style with that of
McKennitt, Holdridge employed countless female vocals by the artist
Aeone, whispering and exclaiming harmonic beauty in breathy tones that
match McKennitt's voice in many ways. For an adaptation of the Camelot
legend from the female perspective, these vocals are a smart and elegant
move by Holdridge, and he uses Aeone's voice sparingly so that she
doesn't overwhelm the orchestral base of the music. To close the album
and film, Holdridge and Aeone collaborated on the song "I Will Remember
You Still," (arranged, produced, recorded, and performed by the singer)
and while based in thematic construct on one of Holdridge's themes from
the score, its new age, Celtic wash of wet mixing and layered vocals
will likely please any Enya enthusiast. Aeone's contributions to the
score are more impressive in terms of dynamic range; her sudden wailing
in the latter half of "Vivienne's Death," as well as her more whimsical
contribution to "Morgaine Grows Up," utilize her abilities with far
greater appeal. Throughout the score, Holdridge also employs a full
adult chorus to accentuate both the barbarism of the action sequences
and the mysticism of the magical elements.
Together, the vocals, chorus, and song are masterfully
woven together with the orchestral performances, and in sum they can
easily take your breath away with their harmony and scope. Always
present is Holdridge's usual emphasis on melodramatic themes, and the
main identity for
The Mists of Avalon will even raise memories of
the bittersweet title theme for
Old Gringo. With the mainstream
catching on to
The Mists of Avalon at breakneck speed in July of
2001, Holdridge caught the attention of the entire industry with this
effort, and while many of his collectors hoped that this would finally
yield his big break into mainstream film scoring, that never happened.
Still, viewers of the show, most of them understandably of the female
variety, made this album a commercial success, which stands (even with
the existence of the songs) as proof of the score's powerful role in the
two-part show. The Varèse Sarabande label took advantage of this
sudden burst of popularity in the same way it would address the wild
fanaticism over Brian Tyler's
Children of Dune two years later.
Together,
The Mists of Avalon and
Children of Dune proved
to be two of the most spectacular television scores of all time, both
demanding a place in any film music collection. The sound quality of the
Holdridge recording is stunning; the layering of instruments and vocals
is well handled and a fair amount of ambient wetness was inserted into
the final mix to give the music an appropriately reverberating element
of fantasy. The inclusion of the McKennitt song, in addition to 65
minutes of Holdridge's music, makes this a knockout album. Holdridge
wrote two and a half hours of music for the show, and even with the
lengthy album, which was a treat for fans of the composer and show, it's
easy to imagine what additional material of high quality still exists
unreleased. Holdridge's music is a richly textured and thematically
powerful accompaniment for the film, bridging the gap between the new
age, Celtic, and classical genres of music with striking effectiveness.
Regardless of whatever nonsensical religious protests regarding
The
Mists of Avalon you may stumble upon, Holdridge's work is above that
level of controversy. It is simply spectacular music and endures as the
single highest point of his entire career.
***** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For Lee Holdridge reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.77
(in 14 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.34
(in 7,592 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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