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FILMTRACKS.COM
PRINTER-FRIENDLY VIEW 
Review of Red Sparrow (James Newton Howard)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you can content yourself with fifteen unique minutes
of monumentally impressive Russian classicism supplied with almost
mythological choral magnificence by James Newton Howard.
Avoid it... if you expect Howard's minimalistic suspense material in the middle of the score to adequately tease the musical transformation to follow, this despite some fleeting resemblance to Bernard Herrmann mannerisms along that path.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Red Sparrow: (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, Red Sparrow 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 Red
Sparrow 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, Red Sparrow
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 I Am Legend and utilized
silence instead; some of that same technique is applied during gruesome
torture scenes in Red Sparrow. 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. ***
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 76:48
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert includes a list of performers but no extra information about the score or film. As in
many of Amazon.com's "CDr on demand" products, the packaging smells incredibly foul when new.
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