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| Goldsmith |
The Mummy: (Jerry Goldsmith) At times, it's a
challenge to determine if director Stephen Sommers intended his 1999
blockbuster,
The Mummy, to actually embody the characteristics of
a serious action flick, because so much of the movie is ridiculously
dumb that there's the possibility that a parody was an underlying goal.
Nothing really remains from the classic 1931 Boris Karloff monster film
of the same name, with the remake a cheap knock-off of the Indiana Jones
concept that resorts to cliches and newly-developed digital rendering
capabilities for a bloated running time. A high priest in 1290 B.C.
Egypt is caught with the pharaoh's mistress and is both buried alive
with flesh eating beetles and cursed for all eternity, as if the being
buried with flesh eating beetles wasn't sufficiently disturbing a death.
He, Imhotep, is the mummy stumbled upon and accidentally released by
Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz, who, in their roles as an American
treasure seeker and British historian, respectively, are plundering the
riches of Hamunaptra in the 1920's. As Imhotep is resurrected, he sets
upon unleashing Biblical plagues, among other auxiliary intentions, upon
a population of extras just waiting for an untimely demise. The concept
of Imhotep's attraction to the modern incarnation of his former Egyptian
lover, the central theme of the 1931 film, is only alluded to in the
1999 version. Inevitably, the special effects of Imhotep's
transformation and plagues are the main attraction while the story was
damned by Sommers' own writing missteps. Sommers and composer Jerry
Goldsmith had collaborated on the ridiculous action/horror film
Deep
Rising the previous year, and
The Mummy came after an
uncharacteristic six-month absence from the film scoring scene for
Goldsmith. Without a doubt, 1999 was the veteran composer's last great
year of production, treating audiences to robust orchestral scores for
this,
The Haunting, and
The 13th Warrior. Though none of
these films merited much praise, the ambitious quality of Goldsmith's
output, as well as the similarly outstanding characteristics of the
recordings' mixes, have caused these scores to become late staples in
the collections of the composer's fans.
While the music for
The Mummy certainly has all the
building blocks of a five-star score (or at least a solid four-star
one), it stumbles due to its odd lack of consistency in quality and
organizational focus throughout. The concept's sequel scores by Alan
Silvestri and John Debney, interestingly, used none of Goldsmith's
material but were arguably more consistent self-contained endeavors. If
you're the kind of devoted film music collector who enjoys Goldsmith's
exotic orchestral bombast in its purest sense, then the aimless
personality of
The Mummy won't bother you. The score was
Goldsmith's most densely ambitious "wall of sound" entry of the era,
blatantly pulling inspiration from the bloated charisma of the story.
It's difficult to determine if Goldsmith approached
The Mummy
with absolutely serious intentions, for his music certainly makes it
seem as though that were the case. But given that the production
elements of the film were extreme to the point of parody, one must
wonder if Goldsmith didn't let rip with the overwrought tone of this
score due to some "tongue in cheek" playfulness. Several of the rhythms
in
The Mummy are directly related to the militaristic parody
movements in
Small Soldiers, which could indicate either a nod to
the comical elements of
The Mummy or perhaps simply the
composer's preferred style of ruckus at the time. Much of the style of
Goldsmith's rambling, percussive rhythms in
The Mummy would be
reprised with greater coherence in
The 13th Warrior. The sheer
density of
The Mummy is both its major attraction and its demise.
The many thematic ideas in the score are often lost in the shuffle,
though it should be noted that each of the four individual themes is
above average compared to the composer's tendency in the following years
to write scores reliant on some comparative clunkers. While all four
ideas receive significant treatment throughout the score, none of them
really establishes itself as the primary identity of the film. Two exist
for the variations on the location and Imhotep and one is provided to
each of the two heroic leads. When one of these themes is being
developed by Goldsmith, this score is at its best, for there are some
massively accessible, tonal expressions of them on brass and
strings.
The most impressive of the themes in
The Mummy is
the ancient Egypt theme, alternately representing the living soul of
Imhotep and the curse placed upon him at the outset of the film. This
theme is rich with both straight-forward boldness and a few twists of
stereotypical Middle-Eastern chord progressions. Its broad performance
at the very outset of the film is its most prominent, though it ranges
in style from solo woodwind in "Giza Port" to frantic hits and swirls of
the ensemble in the opening moments of "The Sand Volcano." Its primary
phrase is rarely expressed by Goldsmith after that massive "Imhotep"
opening, though it does make an appearance near the outsets of "The
Tauregs Attack" and "Closed Door." The sinister side of Imhotep's
resurrection and curses is provided with another theme, foreshadowed
briefly on low woodwind over choir at the end of "Imhotep" and making
itself known in full on brass in the latter half of "The Sarcophagus."
Robust performances of this idea are heard as the havoc is really being
sent forth upon those unfortunate extras in "My Favorite Plague" and
"Crowd Control." It's a relentlessly brutal theme in many of its
performances, though Goldsmith does boil it down to solo woodwind at
times to foreshadow subsequent mummy-related action. A heroic theme for
the film, alternately a straight-laced action motif, is ripped directly
from
Small Soldiers and used during the more upbeat moments of
adventure in the film that involve Fraser's character. Heard first in a
minor-key variation in the latter half of "The Tauregs Attack," the idea
explodes in full during the midsection of "Night Boarders." Goldsmith
allows this theme to truly flourish in "The Sand Volcano," prominently
marching its way to victory at about 2:20 into that cue. The fourth and
final theme in
The Mummy is the obvious love theme, spanning both
the relationship between Imhotep and the mistress as well as the one
between 1920's treasure seekers. The first hints of this string theme
are offered in the ancient Egypt scene in "Imhotep," though it is more
frequently referenced as the score progresses. Fleeting performances in
"Giza Port" and "Night Boarders," as well as several prevalent
statements in the latter half of "Camel Race," cannot compete with the
majesty of the theme's performances in the last minutes of "The Sand
Volcano," when the choir elegantly joins in.
In between all the thematic development in
The
Mummy is a slew of typical Goldsmith motific devises of more
targeted intent, as well as an extremely healthy dose of the composer's
more rowdy action material. As mentioned before, these ideas owe heavily
to
Small Soldiers and would be explored with greater success by
Goldsmith in his replacement score for
The 13th Warrior. With
percussive and synthetic instrumentation appropriate for the region,
many have compared parts of
The Mummy to
The Wind and the
Lion, which contains some of Goldsmith's most memorable action
material for the region. Instrumentally,
The Mummy sufficiently
provides the setting with an exotic tilt, and the elements used here for
that effect, such as the mandolin-like bouzouki and a wealth of regional
percussion, are identical to those heard again in
The 13th
Warrior. Parts of the two scores, in fact, could be interchanged and
few causal fans would notice the difference. The choir in
The
Mummy is used sparingly, which is a nice alternative in some ways to
the outward explosiveness of the voices in
The 13th Warrior, but
outside of the final moments of "Imhotep" and "The Sand Volcano," the
choir doesn't make a significant impact. Electronics are sparsely
employed, mostly as a tool to assist with percussive rhythms rather than
provide their own spicy accents. When included, they most resemble
Star Trek: Insurrection in style. Metallic percussion often takes
the place of the composer's tingling synthetic elements, and a
pronounced role for xylophone is keenly applied to scenes involving
skeletons and insects, a tried and tested scoring technique. The major
difference between
The Mummy and its two direct cousins,
Small
Soldiers and
The 13th Warrior, is that
The Mummy
struggles to maintain a cohesive level of quality and, as a result, a
consistent personality. The former score's exuberant sense of humor and
the latter score's stark sense of antiquity are the kinds of defining
characteristics that
The Mummy lacks. You can't really rely upon
any of the four major themes to carry the whole, for Goldsmith
frequently deviates from them for extended sequences that, in some
cases, as with "The Locusts," are distractingly divergent from the rest
of the work. Likewise, you can't really point to any single instrumental
or vocal element as the definition of the score. (The opposite of this
would be
The Ghost and the Darkness, which exudes a distinct
style in nearly its entire length.)
Overall, within the subset of Goldsmith's action music
of this era,
The Mummy is extraordinary in its forceful stance
but surprisingly anonymous in its character. Perhaps the sheer volume of
the score, with its constant waves of rhythmically powerful action cues
clobbering you at every turn, is actually its defining personality
trait. If this is true, then the organization of the score's rhythmic
and thematic ideas are betrayed by their heavy-handed rendering. Still,
the score, which exhibits the same remarkably resounding sound quality
as Goldsmith's others in 1998 and 1999 (a perfect balance of detail and
reverb), is extremely popular with the composer's collectors, who often
hail it as among his best action ventures ever. That enthusiasm has
always been somewhat curious, but those fans were given the treat of an
isolated score track on the DVD release of the film, from which bootlegs
ensued. In 2018, Intrada Records supplanted the bootlegs and original
Decca release with a generous 2-CD set containing the full score, a
number of alternative takes, and a remastered version of the 1999 album
that contains different mixes of the same cues. (The label also provided
similar treatment at the time to Silvestri's
The Mummy Returns.)
It's a lovely presentation of the score, adding entire sections of the
work, particularly in the first and second acts, that were neglected on
the prior album. But that fuller narrative also exposes more of the
general dysfunction in the cohesiveness of the score, the newly
available cues often impressive on their own but compounding the work's
larger issues of flow. It's an even more exhausting listening experience
on the Intrada set, though enthusiasts will appreciate the Egyptian
theme's magnificent performance in "Closed Door," the mummy's action
theme in "The Flies" (along with swirling, old-school monster music),
and the heroic theme blazing across "Airplane Ride." Also of importance
is the addition of the noble "Desert Burial" interlude for horns and the
engaging "Escape From the Tomb" at the climax. Still, many of the other
new cues are filler suspense entries that could make the album
experience much too long for many listeners. The score definitely needs
some consolidation into a fantastic 30-minute suite to highlight its
wealth of four-star material, many of its top moments existing in its
opening and closing passages. Despite coming ever-so-close to a
four-star rating here overall due to its sheer force of impact,
The
Mummy really doesn't live up to its reputation as touted by
Goldsmith's most ardent collectors. It's tremendous fun but tediously
adrift. Be prepared to sift through the sands for those golden cues.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
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| Bias Check: |
For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.26
(in 124 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.29
(in 153,457 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
The insert of the 1999 Decca album includes no extra information about the score or film.
That of the 2018 Intrada product includes extensive information about both, with the exception of
a list of performers.
