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Review of Murder on the Orient Express (Patrick Doyle)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you have the patience for a highly varied combination
of beautifully lyrical romanticism and understated, fragmented suspense
packed in Patrick Doyle's typical, piano-driven melodrama mode.
Avoid it... if you expect the score's thematic ideas to reveal themselves easily, because Doyle matches the mystery of the plot with intentional obscurity in his constructs through much of his score.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Murder on the Orient Express: (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 Murder on the Orient Express
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 Henry V. Doyle was particularly impressed by
the costumes and sets of Murder on the Orient Express 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. ****
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 56:44
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert includes extensive photography and a lengthy note from the composer.
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