: (James Newton Howard) Despite all the
hype about the sex and nudity contained within Francis Lawrence's 2018
adaptation of the novel of the same name,
isn't
actually sexy at all. Demeaning to women and exploring nothing of
interest in the espionage genre, the movie tries to fool you into
believing that lead actress Jennifer Lawrence is built to be a starring
Russian ballerina swept into the Russian intelligence industry by
becoming a tool of seduction and information extraction as means of
saving her mother. Her notions of becoming a double agent are tested
during her sexual escapades with an American CIA target, the splattering
of blood never far behind her handiwork. Not even a fair dose of hapless
nudity and a supporting role for Jeremy Irons could salvage
for audiences, and the film faded quietly into the shadows
after failed attempts by the production to stir up some media sensation.
Since the lead character opens the film as a ballerina before being
turned into a Vladimir Putin sex drone,
understandably contains a significant amount of classical music placed
into its mix. Perhaps the most interesting considerations about the
soundtrack for this movie involve the choices about whether to place
classical staples by Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Stravinsky, or Bach
into the mix of certain scenes rather than an original score by frequent
Lawrence collaborator James Newton Howard. Recall that the director
dropped 70% of the composer's music from
and utilized
silence instead; some of that same technique is applied during gruesome
torture scenes in
. But Lawrence applies some of the
classical music to replace typical score placements for certain subplots
of the movie as well, leaving Howard's otherwise long effort potentially
fragmented in its strategy of evolving along with the main character.
The director listened to Mozart's "Requiem" and Stravinsky's "The
Firebird" on headphones during the filming, and the latter piece was
utilized as the temp track for the opening ballet and tragedy sequences.
Rather than stick with this music in the final mix, however, Howard was
asked to follow the exact pacing of "The Firebird" in writing an
original alternative that allowed for more variance in demeanor as
required during the scene.
Howard wrote much of the classically oriented half of
Red Sparrow without seeing the footage first, emphasizing a
reliance on classical mannerisms and a vaguely Russian style to his
alternative. Technically speaking, Howard's work for
Red Sparrow
is a bridge between the composer's fully symphonic and choral fantasy
and his synthetically-dominated minimalism, the score opening and
closing with the former while the middle portion akin to Howard's usual
contemporary, urban suspense mode. There is a clear narrative direction
throughout the score, the opulent melodicism of the opening ballerina
scenes shattered during the cue but slowly returning as the lead
character reinvents herself as a different star of the Russian state.
Howard's method of dissolving his thematic material for the girl and
slowly rehabilitating it as the story progresses is quite commendable.
On the other hand, the thematic progressions for the girl are never
really enunciated with total clarity to begin with; Howard instead
relies upon repeated undulating figures and classically informed waltz
progressions of perceived importance to better drive the momentous cues
for the girl's success. Melodies for the Russian dominance and the girl
mingle in two and four-note descending phrases that eventually yield to
an intriguing three-note ascending phrase that builds throughout the
culminating, defiant coronation, "Didn't I Do Well?" until a
not-so-subtle conclusion to the cue drives home the new progression with
absolute clarity. Casual listeners will gravitate towards the "Overture"
and "End Titles" (two cues guest conducted by Finland's respected
Esa-Pekka Salonen, interestingly), as they express the opulent classical
structures in their fullest; there is some redundant structural overlap
between these two cues. These passages will remind film score collectors
of a blend of Victor Reyes' unheralded but outstanding
Grand
Piano during the crescendo to the injury that sets the plot in
motion (though nowhere near as impressive as that 2013 translation of
classical music into a horrifically suspenseful environment) and classic
Bernard Herrmann grandeur and mystery, the latter style a clear
influence on the middle, revelatory portions of this score as Howard
supplies undulating, whimsically inaccessible string textures a la
Vertigo to a cue like "Blonde Suits You." Handled tastefully,
more reliance upon these influences would have been welcomed.
The maligned middle portions of
Red Sparrow may
be overlooked because of long, groaning, ambient sequences like "Take
Off Your Dress" and "Switching Disks" that feature tired techniques of
synthetic and organic dissonance. But hidden in these passages are the
seeds of the return to the melodies of the opening ballet cue, a
transition first hinted in "Follow the Trail Wherever It Leads You" and
solidifying in "Blonde Suits You," "Ticket to Vienna," and "Can I Trust
You?" As "So What Next?" introduces the formal return to classical
melodicism in "Didn't I Do Well?," the two-note phrasing is reminiscent,
intriguingly, of the battle material from Gabriel Yared's rejected score
for
Troy. Undoubtedly, "Didn't I Do Well?" is the singular
highlight of the score, containing the bulk of the transformative
melodic structures that are otherwise less defined in the two, longer,
bookending cues that both conclude with several minutes of ambient
suspense that diminish their appeal. Howard, who had supplied ethereal
choral tones to earlier cues such as "Arriving at Sparrow School,"
allows the choral layer to fulfill Russian stereotypes in "Didn't I Do
Well?" with elegance and grace. This cue is alone worth exploring,
though don't expect all of its melodic consolidation to always make
sense. There are a few disqualifying detriments about
Red Sparrow
that will make its listening experience on album inaccessible for some,
and the dichotomy between suspenseful minimalism and classical
romanticism isn't necessarily one of them. First, the narrative of
Howard's score, while commendable in concept, isn't executed as clearly
as it could have been, in part because his own themes aren't overtly
obvious and are therefore not the easiest to deconstruct. Additionally,
the infusion of the classical pieces into the film for certain subplots
distract from Howard's parallel development. Secondly, the score on
album suffers from poor leveling of gains and a sometimes droning bass
presence, even in the orchestral passages, that forces the listener to
constantly adjust the volume during the listening experience. When the
only sound you hear in a quiet cue like "Anya, Come Here" is distortion
from the woofers, then you know something is wrong. Finally, several of
the suspense cues offer nothing of substance whatsoever, a trait not
uncommon to Howard's work in that realm but one that causes the very
long album for
Red Sparrow to drag significantly. Overall, this
score is promising in the whole and magnificent at its height, but the
presentation of its ranks on album, especially sans any of the classical
pieces, underachieves to the same extent as the film.
*** @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 84,684 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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