: (Patrick Doyle)
Assembling a very impressive cast of stage and screen veterans, director
and producer Kenneth Branagh resurrected Agatha Christie's famous murder
mystery for a 2017 remake and cast himself as the author's famed lead,
Hercule Poirot. Some liberty with the characters was taken by Branagh,
though enough of the original story was retained to beg questions from
critics about why this version of
was necessary given the high quality of the award-winning 1974
adaptation. On the three-day trip out of Istanbul westward, the
luxurious 1930's trans-European train becomes derailed by an avalanche
and is consumed on board by a murder mystery left to Poirot to solve.
The ensemble cast affair leads Poirot through a variety of deceptive
leads along his journey to satisfy his own tough standards of justice.
Although the movie did not triumph to the same extent as the 1974
version, it did prevail with enough box office returns to generation
discussions about Branagh returning as Poirot in other Agatha Christie
stories. As long as he continues to make films, not far behind will be
composer Patrick Doyle, whose music has graced more than a dozen Branagh
movies since 1989's
. Doyle was particularly impressed by
the costumes and sets of
during the
production, and he used this inspiration to write some concept material
for the film that eventually informed its major themes. The widely
acclaimed score for the 1974 film was by Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, and
his stylish, waltz-like melodies for that movie have long been performed
by pianists and orchestras in concert. By comparison, Doyle tones back
the general demeanor of his score, stripping the lavish flourishes of
the concept's luxurious intrigue and relying more heavily upon a
retrained, mysterious core that yields deeper heartbreak in its later
passages. It's a darker and more dramatic take on the same idea, and
Doyle's work will thus take additional thought to appreciate. Whereas
Bennett's music is easily accessible in its extroversion, Doyle's
alternative will attract far less mainstream attention despite its
intellectually superior approach.
Like his predecessor, Doyle does utilize the piano as the
heart and soul of 2017's
Murder on the Orient Express, some of
the final performances by his own hands. An orchestra is present, but
the strings are strongly dominant and brass accents are restrained to a
few moments of action or heightened suspense. Thankfully, Doyle
addresses the exotic nature of the locale with a few ethnic specialty
contributors, including duduk, ney, and percussion, and a cimbalom
offers a touch of the era in its distinctly metallic presence. Solos on
strings often reside in the viola range, seemingly too low at times for
a violin and too high for a cello. The duduk in particular embodies the
mystery element of the story, a solid choice given its mournfully
detached performance tones. The narrative of Doyle's music is well
suited for the emotional development of the movie, his early cues
expressing the Middle-Eastern location and enthusiastic excitement of
the train, the middle portions absorbed by suspense and lament, and the
late passages succumbing to resolutely restrained drama. Doyle devises
three primary melodies and an auxiliary mystery motif, and some of these
ideas experience significant deconstruction as story demands the
obscurity of its narrative paths until the end. Branagh's Poirot
receives an intriguingly upbeat identity summarized in its most
Bennett-like elegance on piano in "Poirot," its first two phrases
containing an initial four-note series establishing anticipation and a
secondary, three-note series answering the call as to resolve a little
mystery within itself. The most obvious placement of the theme is in
"The Orient Express" near the start and "Orient Express Suite" at the
end, the exuberant rhythmic formations reminiscent of Doyle's
Exit to
Eden and surprisingly applying a tapped percussive base that makes
Poirot's idea a closer representation of an old train than anything else
in the score. The second theme exists for the journey, and while
dominant in early cues like "Jaffa to Stamboul," "Arrival," and
"Departure," this longer, more romantically fluid identity does not
fully reappear until the middle section of "Orient Express Suite." For
casual listeners, these two upbeat identities will be the highlight of
the score, their exuberance matched by a solid layering of Doyle's
exotic instrumentation.
The third main theme in
Murder on the Orient
Express is where Doyle really earns his paycheck, however, and it
naturally only exposes its full melody later in the story. There is a
complicated backstory linking many of the characters of the plot
together, and the crime is inextricable from the melancholic events of
years past involving the suffering of the Armstrong family that the led
to this unconventional murder. For this connection to the Armstrongs,
Doyle writes a rather dour, piano-led theme debuting in "The Armstrong
Case" and expressing itself to a greater degree in subsequent cues until
its lengthy resolution in the powerhouse, "Justice." The most
interesting aspect of this theme is its hesitancy to actually reveal its
melody rather than stew in its melodramatically Doyle-saturated chord
progressions. The meandering piano lines and slowly shifting strings
accompanying them carry the theme in fragments without allowing the
melody to fully realize until the song version of the theme at the
conclusion. The piano lines of the idea, touching upon only a few of the
actual theme's notes here and there, accelerate from "The Armstrong
Case" through "Geography" and "It is Time," additional layers revealing
more of the theme's actual structure as it builds momentum through
Poirot's discoveries. Even in "Justice," which slowly builds the idea to
a grand revelation in the style of "In Pace" from
Hamlet before
yielding to aching sadness in its final minutes, the melody is never
truly illuminated in memorable fashion. The lovely "Never Forget" song
adaptation, with lyrics by Branagh completing a haunting love letter of
sorts to the avenged, murdered girl of the Armstrong family, offers the
same piano and string meanderings heard throughout the score, but the
vocals themselves finally provide the only full outline of the melody in
the soundtrack. Hearing Michelle Pfeiffer sing again, a mainstream first
since
The Fabulous Baker Boys nearly three decades before, is
extremely satisfying, especially with the lack of any evident
auto-tuning to help her along. It's a strikingly breathy, intimate
performance, and the progressively deeper instrumental backing in the
final minute of the song is immensely impactful. This is Patrick Doyle
melodrama at its absolute finest, and while sparse, somber songs like
this often evade major awards, this one is deserving of widespread
recognition.
The lack of obvious delineation of the Armstrong family
theme's full melodic structures outside of "Never Forget" is,
unfortunately, a detriment to
Murder on the Orient Express on
album. At times, as late in "Justice," the theme sounds like the backing
for the Joe Sample and Will Jennings 1980 song, "One Day I'll Fly Away."
But its lack of clarity makes perfect sense in the film. This is a story
of obfuscation and mystery, and even at the end there are questions
remaining and a character (Poirot) left to absorb a new manifestation of
justice. The mass of suspense material in the midsection of this score
stews with significant overlaps of fragments, whether instrumental,
rhythmic, or melodic, between the Poirot and Armstrong themes. Perhaps
the most poignant of these is "Ma Katherine," when Poirot is revealed to
be suffering his own lost love, and the progressions of the Armstrong
theme accompany this scene with distant solo voice to express the shared
sense of mourning. Complicating matters is a mystery motif conjured by
Doyle for the second quarter of the score, a series of four notes often
conveyed by duduk and developed first in "Judgement" before inhabiting
"Touch Nothing Else," "MacQueen," "Mrs. Hubbard," and "This is True."
Faint hints of the Poirot theme often mingle with this idea, and it
retains tonal accessibility while adding the duduk and cimbalom to
infuse a little exoticism and confusion in the soundscape. The
instrumental mix of "This is True" is particularly encapsulating. There
are a few moments of increased adrenaline in the score, beginning with
the source piece of sorts, "The Wailing Wall," a jaunty Middle-Eastern
motif for the opening Jerusalem scene. The rhythmic panic of "Keep
Everyone Inside" offers outstanding violin lines, and electric bass and
brass join the same pounding movement in "Dr. Arbuthnot." All put
together,
Murder on the Orient Express is an encapsulating,
intelligent, and effective suspense score laced with just enough
romantic lyricism to suffice for the period and lavish setting. The
optimistic "Orient Express Suite" summarizes the score's two extroverted
themes well, and the pairing of "Justice" and the song, "Never Forget,"
present Doyle's morbidly restrained theme of lamentation with dominating
authority. The lack of clarity for the suspense and Armstrong themes are
this score's sole weakness, for casual listeners will have difficulty
recalling anything other than stewing emotional turmoil from the
midsections of this work. Such was the intent, however, in this fine
score.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
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(in 32 reviews)
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