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| Eastwood |
Mystic River: (Clint Eastwood) The 24th film for Eastwood as a
director,
Mystic River marks the fourth time he served as the project's
composer as well. He doesn't often direct movies in which he does not also star,
but
Mystic River (along with 1997's underrated
Midnight in the Garden of
Good and Evil) was a notable exception. Dennis Lehane's best-selling 2001 novel
"Mystic River" had been best described as a contemporary Shakespearean tragedy
set on the mean streets of South Boston. The friendship and gruesome bond that
connects three boys and their adulthood counterparts lands them in the middle of a
tense murder mystery when one of their daughters is murdered, another one of them
is a suspect, and a third is the cop investigating the crime. The film was hailed
as one of the best dramas of 2003 and served Eastwood his best chance in an awards
season since
Unforgiven ten years earlier. While leaving the bulk of the
film's workload for the six or seven primary actors to carry, Eastwood takes on
much of the rest of the production duties himself, including the composition of the
score. For people who grew up watching Eastwood kill without remorse on screen in
all of those 1960's and 1970's Westerns and brainless cop thrillers, the idea of
hearing him compose a serious, dramatic score for a major motion picture, despite
his known talents on the piano, was quite frightening. His music for
Space
Cowboys,
Absolute Power, and
The Bridges of Madison County wasn't
widely recognized for its quality (or even its effectiveness), and Eastwood often
relied upon Lennie Niehaus and others to flesh out the ideas he had for the scores
to his own films. While he technically takes solo credit for the composing duties
for
Mystic River, he once again employs the assistance of his friends and
family to assist in adapting, orchestrating, arranging, and conducting the score.
Interestingly, while the film only took 39 days to shoot in 2002, the score itself
was four months in the making for Eastwood. His choice for the recording ensemble
was the Boston Symphony Orchestra, of course, since he seemed preoccupied with
keeping the entire production rooted in the Boston area. Two source cues are
offered by Eastwood's son, Kyle, a well known musician in the New York jazz
community who would increase his contributions to his father's films in subsequent
years.
The score that Eastwood composed for
Mystic River on piano
back in Carmel, California, is not the synthetic or contemporary variety that you
would expect from an unseasoned composer. Eastwood did seem to have a distinct
orchestral sound in mind when shooting the picture, and that sound includes a
chorus to back the weighty orchestral performances. Unfortunately, when you attempt
to analyze the music apart from the picture, the simplicity of its construction
detracts from its listenability. The mood is right, and in the film, the music
probably suffices for any viewer. But the substance just isn't there, and the
amateurish construction of score can be no better summed up than in the lengthy
sequences of extended whole notes for the orchestra. Moments of terror and fright
in the score are badly underplayed, poorly using dissonant techniques. The passages
for the entire ensemble are pleasant and harmonious, but they lack counterpoint,
decent orchestration, and true direction. Eastwood's themes seem to work
considerably better when performed by a solo piano, as is the case for several cues
in
Mystic River. A decent piano player himself, Eastwood's piano
compositions had appeared effectively in films before, and they set an adequate
style of anguish and loss for the characters in this film as well. But when the
full ensemble is engaged, the score suffers from its own basic, drawn-out
melodrama. The strings carry very slow progressions and are accompanied by the
piano and the occasional woodwind. It's difficult to say the following remark,
because it is an insult to any artist, but the score for
Mystic River sounds
like the work of a college student, a composer in need of five to ten more years of
experience before being able to write a dramatically effective score. Compounding
the problem is an anemic performance by the symphonic players. At times, the
simplicity of
Mystic River is forgotten, but this only happens when the
chorus adds a spiritual element of grandeur to the equation. Otherwise, when heard
on album, the score is uninteresting and underdeveloped, alternating between
frustratingly sparse orchestral cues and the more sustainable piano solos. The two
contributed pieces by Eastwood's son are out of place, but complete the musical
representation of the film. Overall, this is a score that has to be appreciated in
the context of the film, and unfortunately the experience would not deter the
director from relying too heavily on himself for the underachieving music in his
following projects.
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The insert includes a note from the film's music supervisor about the
score and film.
