Filmtracks: News of the World (James Newton Howard)

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Written 3/1/21

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Buy it... if fifteen minutes of melodic grace and robust, accessible Western character is enough to merit your interest in an otherwise challenging work.

Avoid it... if you cannot suffer a broken, lonely, and discordant score for much of its length, even its lyrical highlights exhibiting the effects of a somber environment.

Howard

News of the World: (James Newton Howard) Movies like Paul Greengrass' 2020 Western News of the World should remind us all why it's best we didn't live in that time and place. Although redeeming in the end, the plot of film shows a Texas of 1870 full of killers, kidnappers, and every other variety of undesirable people. In this rough environment, a former captain of the Confederate Army roams the country spreading news from the cities, reading from recent newspapers and being received with hostility more often than not. He happens across an orphaned young white girl who had been raised by Native Americans but is being transported to her remaining relatives; due to mishaps involving the government forces in the area, the captain decides to deliver the girl himself, yielding adventures and heartbreak when the relatives abuse her as anyone else would. The film's wide praise extends from Tom Hanks' performance in the lead role to the usual production elements that dominate a well-shot Western. Still, some audiences found Hanks' persona and his relationship with the girl to be too sanitized, the conflict of the tale too predictable. At any rate, News of the World offered a chance for Greengrass to swap out his regular composing collaborator, John Powell, with Western veteran James Newton Howard, who had written a variety of genre scores ranging from heroic to post-apocalyptic much earlier in his career. He found his assignment on News of the World a challenge not only because of the pandemic of 2020 necessitating the recording of sections of the ensemble apart from each other but also due to the tone of the film. Howard was keen to emphasize that the lead captain is a broken man in a broken land, and the music therefore needed to have all the basic components of a traditional Western score but convey them in ways that evoke sadness and loss. Lamenting his inability to unleash the usual bravado of a genre theme more than a couple of times in the score, the composer concentrated on reworking his primary thematic base for the film extensively before finding an idea that was malleable enough to address those rare moments of heightened excitement while more often stewing in tortured rephrasing for the lead character.

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Although the most likely instrumental tones for News of the World would have seemed to be banjo, acoustic guitar, fiddle, and piano, Howard instead sought older-sounding European alternatives like viola da gambas, cello d'amores, gut-string fiddles, and out of tune pump organs to form what he called a "broken consort" for the captain's suffering. It's tough to say that assembling these instruments made any truly discernable difference on the sound of the final recording, the score's performances sounding beaten but not necessarily foreign; the same result might have been achievable from more standard tools as long as the players offered similar resonance. Much of the score is sustained by just these seven or eight musicians, and the composer even throws in atmospheric electronics to represent the mystery involving the girl. These textures are evident in "Johanna Returns Home" and "A Gift," with "Dime Mountain" expanding upon the synthetics to include pace-setting effects that are, in fact, the composer's own exhales. That lengthy fight cue is a discordant display of subtle horror, Howard throwing bass harmonicas and deep bass thumping into an unpleasant mix. Cues like "Dust Storm" and "Erath County" are quietly sinister, minimalistic and dissonant until the latter bursts with more aggressive pulses of primal percussion and aggrieved solo strings. You can tell that Howard was struggling to balance the broken aspects of the captain with the wholesome heart and his benevolent intent towards the girl, for the more conventional piano does eventually emerge as a defining force later in the score. The same could be said about the larger orchestral ensemble; its usage is fairly minimal in News of the World, but the score really cooks when it is applied to the later scenes. Through his entire writing process, Howard remained laser focused on the captain's character, intentionally leaving the girl or landscapes without any thematic representation. The main theme for the film exists in two variants, both originating in the composer's notion that the captain should have a hymn-like identity because of how he prepares for and performs the news in a fashion not too dissimilar to a minister. This reverence isn't clearly defined early in the story, but as the character bonds with the girl, Howard allows both the primary and family variants to become focused and shine for the score's highlights.

The main theme by Howard for News of the World is prevalent but not overly obvious, only the primary statements for the captain likely to grab your attention on first listen. The theme occupies all of "Captain Jefferson Kidd" in solemn, fragmented form and continues in even more frail passages of "There is No Time for Stories" and "Leaving Wichita." Lonely fiddle expresses the idea at 1:38 into "Now for Some Federal News," but Howard opts to separate the theme into two distinct uses thereafter. At 0:58 into "The Road to Dallas" and 0:41 into "End Titles," Howard translates the theme into a fully rollicking Western identity, one of the composer's best career expressions in the genre. This fantastic realization comes alongside a rhythm that serves as a traveling motif, heard first in the middle of "Arriving at Red River" and accompanying the main theme at 0:38 into "The Road to Dallas" and the opening of "End Credits." For softer interactions involving the captain, Howard supplies the piano-based family variant on the theme, using the familiar underlying chord progressions and a bit of the same phrasing. This version of the theme peeks through at 2:16 into "There is No Time for Stories" but makes its full, lovely self heard at 1:53 into "What Else Can You Teach Me?" It continues on trumpet at 0:27 into "Kidd Defies Farley," opens "Kidd Visits Maria," and closes out the score from 2:44 into "End Titles" to the end of that track. There are individual motifs that do exist for singular moments that are worth mentioning, including a bright and optimistic coda for the previously broken consort in "Miss Johanna Kidd" and an impressively resounding passage of symphonic force at 2:01 into "Kidd Visits Maria" that Howard reprises at 2:04 into "End Titles." While it may seem that the "End Titles" cue is simply a straight repeat of the recordings heard previously in the score, the mix and performance emphasis is indeed distinct. Overall, News of the World is a highly respectable but not always engaging or pleasant listening experience. The action and suspense material is often understated, Howard's ambient and small-ensemble passages often failing to connect. But when he shifts into his lyrical mode, you can't help but admire the musical transformation at work in this score. No cue better embodies this journey than "What Else Can You Teach Me?" At nearly 72 minutes, the score-only album commands respect but not frequent enjoyment, but the fifteen minutes of thematic highlights convey Howard at his best. Without a doubt, "End Titles" stands among the best tracks of the year. *** @Amazon.com: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For James Newton Howard reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.4 (in 70 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.36 (in 86,530 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.

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