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| Zimmer |
The Peacemaker: (Hans Zimmer) While
The
Peacemaker didn't involve producer Jerry Bruckheimer or directors
Michael Bay or Tony Scott, most regular moviegoers could easily have
been fooled. Directed actually by "E.R"'s Mimi Leder and receiving input
from Steven Spielberg, who had, in part, chosen this project as the
debut of his new Dreamworks studio, the 1997 film follows many of the
same formula techniques that Bruckheimer productions had introduced very
popularly to the world but with a slightly deeper dramatic reach. A
story of international diplomatic intrigue is wrapped around an
old-fashioned American pursuit of a stolen Russian nuclear weapon. A
distraught Bosnian diplomat to the United Nations, in grief over the
loss of his family in the warfare of Sarajevo, seeks to smuggle the
weapon into New York and exact his revenge. The acting of George Clooney
and Nicole Kidman elevated the film's mainstream appeal outside of
military buffs in much the same way that
Crimson Tide had
accomplished two years earlier. Leder's direction offered a somewhat
more stylish and poignant take on what the Bruckheimers, Bays, and
Scotts of the industry could muster, a few densely spectacular scenes
floating the picture above the usual testosterone-fest. One of the most
obvious direct connections between the
Crimson Tide and
The
Peacemaker was the music by composer Hans Zimmer, who was in the
process of revolutionizing the sound of the bombastic blockbuster score
and influencing his numerous assistants in the same direction. For
Zimmer,
The Peacemaker was an opportunity to forget the
contentious circumstances over the production of music in both
Crimson Tide and
The Rock. In
Crimson Tide, Zimmer
had to battle with Bruckheimer over the use of the choir, and in
The
Rock, Zimmer was forced into an uncomfortable position of serving as
a ghostwriter for Nick Glennie-Smith when Bruckheimer refused some of
Glennie-Smith's music. Interestingly, however, Spielberg was an enormous
fan of the score for
Crimson Tide (which is always amusing to
consider given how vastly different its tone is from the usual John
Williams score), and he specifically encouraged Zimmer to carry over one
of the swinging rhythm action figures from that score into
The
Peacemaker.
Zimmer was much more insistent that he was confident in
his approach for
The Peacemaker, and Leder and Spielberg extended
him far greater courtesy in allowing him space to write what he felt was
correct for the film, starting with his usual "concept suite" of ideas.
The resulting score is a culmination of ideas that were arguably more
satisfying for Zimmer than his previous work in the genre. "In
Peacemaker, I managed to finish off all the ideas that I didn't
quite get right in
Crimson Tide. How many sunflowers scenes did
Van Gogh paint before he was happy?" Zimmer stated just after the
score's completion. "Sometimes it's nice to go over old ground just
because you learn something. In film scoring, there's revolution and
there's evolution." He was likely doing both at once, though Zimmer
would joke about how the sound he created for
Crimson Tide and
perpetuated in
The Peacemaker caught on so furiously with other
composers. His music for
The Peacemaker definitely draws
connections to the earlier, superior score, but it also stands on its
own with no less than eight distinct themes and its own strikingly
powerful and often dissonant style. The ensemble would be different for
this score as well. Most of the sound effects and choral employment in
Crimson Tide carry over directly to
The Peacemaker, but
Zimmer's electronics and the choir would be aided by over 100 orchestral
players this time around. With the composer's usual technique of merging
the synthetic and organic, though, the live players exist at an inherent
disadvantage. In fact, some casual listeners will likely interpret most
of the score as entirely synthetic, a trait of recording and mixing
habits that would prove bothersome to some Zimmer fans for years to
come. Even when a score like
The Peacemaker makes use of the full
ensemble, the arrangement of that recording with synthetic percussion,
among other samples and backing of bass elements, causes the entire mix
to take on a harsh, electronic edge with a heavy emphasis on the bass
region. This soon-to-be trademark Zimmer sound represents both the best
and worst of the composer's divisive appeal, depending on your taste for
ultra-masculine film music. In retrospect, it's refreshing to hear that
Zimmer had not yet dropped the woodwinds and other treble elements,
ferocious flute lines accenting the train hijack sequence and violins
often wildly hyperactive in their upper ranges during several cues as
well.
To say that
The Peacemaker features eight themes is
a bit misleading, because only three of them receive significant and/or
meaningful airtime and only four can be traced back to unique characters
of other elements in the film. The most memorably obvious thematic
element exists for the tragedy of Sarajevo and the diplomat's sorrow,
and it is this theme that Zimmer identifies as his only lingering
personal favorite from the score. In reference to this tragic element,
Zimmer stated, "I liked one theme... Because it was inspired. We all
have craft, we all have technique. But the moments of inspiration,
that's where it really happens for composers." The ethnicity of the
instrumentation and the voice of Mamek Khadem in these portions serve as
a fascinating bridge between
Beyond Rangoon and
Gladiator
in Zimmer's career, and the general tone and classically-inclined
progressions of the theme merge well with the performances of Frederic
Chopin music that the diplomat's character performs on piano in the
film. Together, this combination of melancholy music from Zimmer and
Chopin would provide audiences with their most vivid musical memories of
The Peacemaker. Demand for both "Nocturne Opus 55 No. 1 in F
Minor" (which the young girl performs in the story) and "Nocturne No. 20
in C Sharp Minor" (which the diplomat/teacher performs in memory of his
slain family) experienced a popular increase due to their obvious and
beautiful use in the widely viewed film. The more powerful of the two
sequences offers Nick Glennie-Smith's performances on piano, eventually
overtaken by the orchestral ensemble with remarkable class. In context,
the Sarajevo theme by Zimmer and the use of Chopin are at complete odds
with the remainder of the score, and these sequences beckon you to your
editing software to create a suite of seven or eight minutes of this
material alone. The remainder of
The Peacemaker, by comparison,
is all brute force and little elegance, and this contrast is the simple
reason why the lovely music described above is the downright highlight
in the film and on album. Of the remaining three themes, the two
representing the nuclear weapons and the corrupt Russian general
stealing them for a profit intertwine on several occasions. While you
can clearly delineate the robust Russian march for General Kodoroff, the
theme for the bombs is far more sinister and obtuse. That idea is a
suspense motif that reinvents itself throughout the score but receives
its clearest performances in the lowest registers of the first three
minutes of the film's early train-loading sequence.
The march for the Russian general is a stoic,
metal-clanging series of short bursts for brass that accompanies the
train as it departs and figures into a few later scenes. Zimmer recorded
a two-minute suite-like rendition of this theme (not available on the
commercial album) that also explores the bombs' theme. A later
adaptation of the theme places it in the instrumentation of the Sarajevo
material, a natural transition point in the story and a highlight of the
score. The final major theme in
The Peacemaker is actually the
primary idea for the film, ironically, and it is most commonly
associated with Clooney's agent character and the heroic actions of the
American military. You first hear this somewhat swashbuckling theme
dramatically and at a very slow pace in the scene when the agent boards
one of three helicopters to pursue the stolen bombs, and the momentum of
the theme is heightened considerably throughout the following chase
sequence in which one of the choppers is shot down by a Russian missile.
After the Americans recover all but one of the bombs, the scene ends
with a prototypical, muscularly harmonic announcement of the theme in
heroic fashion. The film's finale offers a softer, mournful variation on
this theme before the opening of the end credits lets rip with it at
full force. This end title sequence was re-arranged and placed at the
end of the "Chase" cue on the commercial album. It is in the rhythmic
introduction to this theme that Zimmer pulls the exact same introductory
phrase from the start of his main theme for
Crimson Tide, with
equally satisfying results. The downside of
The Peacemaker is
that the majority of its action sequences feature stock Media
Ventures-era material that fails to impress. In fact, much of it is so
obnoxious in its pounding clumsiness that the score requires significant
personal editing to collect the compelling portions into a lengthy
suite. Some of this issue relates to the abrasive nature of Zimmer's
dissonant, staccato ensemble hits during so much of the action. Among
the more irritating cues is "Devoe's Revenge," a spectacular scene in
the film that unfortunately contains an inarticulate mess of rhythmic
bombast contributed by conductor Gavin Greenaway. The commercial album
for
The Peacemaker does its best to emphasize both sides of the
score, but Jeff Rona's arrangement (which he considered among his best)
still fails in that it forces the music into the suite-emphasized mold
that Zimmer prefers to write for and hear himself. His disdain for short
cues unfortunately translates into an album that, like
Crimson
Tide, diminishes the work's highlights by hiding them in 10+ minute
suites dominated by the ear-splitting bombast.
It's nearly impossible to reference the action in
The Peacemaker by using the original 1997 commercial album from
Dreamworks, and luckily for genre junkies, an inevitable 2-CD bootleg of
recording sessions floated around the Internet so long that MP3's of it
were to be found practically everywhere. The bootleg, which runs over
100 minutes with the commercial album's "Peacemaker" suite thrown in for
good measure (that music never appeared in the film intact given that it
was the early concept suite), illuminates the themes with far better
presentations. This includes the Russian general's theme in "Kodoroff"
and "The Frontier," the bomb's theme in "The Real World," the heroic
title theme for the Americans in "I Must Go" and "Peacemaker," and
portions of the Sarajevo theme spread throughout. The film version of
one of the Chopin pieces (in "Piano Sereno") is included as well. For
Zimmer fanatics, the bootleg was absolutely required listening.
Thankfully, the score finally received what Zimmer dreads to see: a
vastly expanded edition featuring the mass of music recorded for the
film. The limited 2-CD set from La-La Land Records in 2014 is a nice
combination of the two albums, taking the same very short cues featured
on the bootleg and combining them three or four to a track, yielding
accessibly arranged cues that contrast to Rona's longer suites and the
bootleg's short bursts. Listeners accustomed to the bootleg may not hear
much difference in sound quality (the early portions of the score are
still far too bass heavy for their own good, even on the La-La Land
mix), and the contents are largely the same. For those still relying
upon the Dreamworks album's suites decades later, you will be rewarded
by the expanded presentations' better representation of not only the
themes but the instrumental diversity that struggles to shine in
The
Peacemaker but at least it exists amongst all the ruckus. On the
other hand, the actual score for the film doesn't emphasize the Khadem
performances as much as the original album did (the film only allows
them to really shine twice), perhaps enticing Zimmer collectors to turn
to Ofra Haza's similar vocals in
The Prince of Egypt the
following year to scratch that itch further. Some of the Sarajevo
theme's tragic melody carries over to that excellent score as well. A
Lisbeth Scott alternate bonus track on the 2014 set is curious but badly
synchronized. Despite the often dissonant and obnoxious action pounding
in
The Peacemaker, its intelligent nuances make it a continued
recommendation. This score is all over the map in terms of quality, but
it remains a highlight of pure Media Venture action era, and collectors
will be well served by the 2014 set, the perfect tool of comparison for
both the film and album arrangements of the music.
@Amazon.com: CD or
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- Music as Written for the Film: ****
- Music as Heard on the 1997 Dreamworks Album: ***
- Music as Heard on the Bootlegs and 2014 La-La Land Set: ****
- Overall: ****
| Bias Check: |
For Hans Zimmer reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.86
(in 118 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.01
(in 290,591 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
The Dreamworks album's insert includes a list of musicians, but no extra information about the score
of film. That of the 2014 La-La Land set contains extensive notation about both. The bootlegs feature many
different variations in artwork.
