Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #442
Written 1/5/07
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Buy it... if you seek an exotic, rich fantasy score with thematic
integrity and grand, tonal schemes while maintaining a persistent sense
of dread in its dissonant accompaniment.
Avoid it... if you are easily exhausted by extremely dense,
complicated, and emotionally conflicted scores, no matter their
beauty.
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| Navarrete |
Pan's Labyrinth: (Javier Navarrete) It's not often
that films with two concurrent storylines stand equally as strong as the
two in Mexican director Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth. A
highly complex film with rich connections between its real and fairy
tale halves, Pan's Labyrinth is an exploration of both the
rebellion against Franco in Spain after World War II and one young
girl's imaginative attempts to handle her own horrific place in that
struggle. While references to The Wizard of Oz can be made, there
should be no doubt that Pan's Labyrinth has no intention of being
shown to children, for its concepts are truly disturbing in a gothic,
socio-political way. The overwhelming fantasy element in the film does
seem to influence the orchestral score more than the realistic and
militaristic side of the story. That score is provided by experienced
Spanish composer Javier Navarrete, who has served as Del Toro's usual
collaborator for his Spanish-language projects (while Marco Beltrami has
scored his English-language ones). The task of matching the stunning
visuals of Pan's Labyrinth would require an extremely broad and
creative approach by Navarrete, whose orchestral knowledge would be more
than sufficient for a massive fantasy score. His finished score is
definitely a product of the film's gloomy brutality. The ominous
environment of Del Toro's bleak designs permeates every moment of the
music for Pan's Labyrinth, and Navarrete's elegant style of
writing causes the score to have a distinct allure despite its largely
harsh and depressing emotional impact. Part of that allure comes from
the simple fact that Navarrete's sound will be fresh for most American
and mainstream listeners, and his romantic sensibilities will give you a
feel similar in intrigue to Dario Marianelli's work for V for
Vendetta and The Brothers Grimm. Perhaps it truly takes a
European composer to make the darkness so bright with an aural battle of
harmony and dissonance; one of the few unfortunate aspects of Pan's
Labyrinth is its easy superiority in raw creative power over most of
anything the A-list American composers are writing today.
Apart from the film,
Pan's Labyrinth is a score
that will abuse you during each listen and yet you can't help but coming
back for more. Painted with a large orchestral and choral palette,
Navarrete's score is rich with thematic integrity and grand, tonal
schemes while also infusing a sense of dread in persistently dissonant
accompaniment. The title theme is a lullaby immediately introduced in
the form of a humming girl's voice (similar to John Ottman's
Hide and
Seek). Backed by delicate piano, whimsical strings, and deep vocals
in a faint mix, this theme would extend beautifully to "Mercedes
Lullaby" and "A Princess." The theme would be interpolated well
throughout the two storylines, serving as a strong identity for the
score. While its beauty cannot be denied, it's ultimately a cold and
inaccessible theme, especially by the film's finale. While the theme may
be sparsely rendered in its major performances, the remainder of the
score is extremely dense with activity. As the horrors of the real-life
storyline continue to unfold in the film, and the connections between
them and the fairy tale expose themselves, the score loses its whimsy
and slowly shifts its tone to one of horror; this transformation is one
of the significantly unique and impressive aspects of Navarrete's score.
The romantic attitude developed in "The Labyrinth," "Rose, Dragon," and
"The Fairy and the Labyrinth," often led by a truly elegant grand piano
mixed will in front of the ensemble, eventually yields to more dissonant
confusion in the bone-chilling "Not Human" and "Deep Forest." An
abundance of light, tingling percussion and a phenomenally incorporated
layering of deep woodwinds, along with the tendency of the choir to
resonate deep in the male-voice regions, contribute to the
other-worldliness of the score. The straight horror cues, while
terrifyingly unlistenable in some regards, continue to maintain your
interest simply because of their seemingly exotic constructs, making
Pan's Labyrinth a score, at the very least, worth analysis. On
its generous, full-length album, Navarrete's score risks becoming an
exhausting listening experience (as it was intended to be), but there
are no less than twenty minutes of the more harmonically accessible
music for fantasy genre fans to enjoy apart from the dissonant
influences. There may be no single cue that will rank among the year's
best, but the overall impression that
Pan's Labyrinth leaves you
with is unmistakably powerful.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
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