Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #1,607
Written 2/12/07
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Buy it... if a heavy dose of harmonious, but somewhat stagnant
contemplation is acceptable in your otherwise stock thriller sound.
Avoid it... if you expect the instrumental and atmospheric
creativity of Dario Marianelli's previous mainstream efforts to carry
over into this more routine score.
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| Marianelli |
The Return: (Dario Marianelli) You really have to
wonder what Sarah Michelle Gellar is thinking when she continues to
accept roles like the lead in The Return. Her inability to
extract herself from the horror and thriller genre after her run on
Buffy must be maddening for her fans, who certainly should be
noticing that she's beginning to age beyond the cuteness that made her
viable ten years ago. Without a doubt, The Return isn't the
vehicle to her next stage of success; in matter of fact, the film is a
dramatic step back for nearly everyone involved with it. The
appropriately-title film marks the return of British director Asif
Kapadia to American cinema after five successful years overseas. He
reunites with two key members of his production team on the 2001
BAFTA-winning film The Warrior: cinematographer Roman Osin and
composer Dario Marianelli. Osin's visual framing of the Texas landscape
in The Return is reportedly among the highlights, though few
factors seem to have been able to save the project from fiscal disaster.
Closing from its wide release with only $7 million in earnings, The
Return was a casualty of its own horrifically poor pacing, cheap
scare tactics, and examinations of religious reincarnation that weren't
intelligent enough to compensate for the ineffectiveness of the horror.
The bore-fest provides Gellar as a sales representative for a trucking
company who travels to a town in Texas to investigate hallucinations
that relate to the death of a girl much like herself, and, given how
these films work, probably is herself. Composer Dario Marianelli has
burst into American cinema with resounding force in the past two years,
with Pride & Prejudice nominated for an Oscar, and both The
Brothers Grimm and V for Vendetta showcasing the composer's
talents with full orchestral ensembles in attack mode. The outrageous
creativity and enticing bombast recorded for those scores has raised
significant awareness to Marianelli's seemingly fresh approach to the
American scoring industry, making a mundane project like The
Return an intriguing possibility for a composer to shake the usual
sounds of such cheap thrillers.
If you're expecting to hear the blatantly refreshing
atmospheres of Marianelli's scores for the aforementioned thrillers and
dramas, you'll be left disappointed. One aspect of his writing that has
fascinated listeners has been his intelligent blend of the orchestral
and electronic, and while he likes to incorporate synthetic elements
into each of his scores, the mixture in
The Return isn't all that
interesting. The score is, primarily, a soft orchestral one for much of
its running time. The first six cues on album, from "The Girl with Two
Souls" to "Terry Warms Up," are relaxing explorations of Marianelli's
very understated themes for the film. Early cues merge an echoing piano
mix with slight strings and a very softly (and barely audible) rendered
female vocalist. Some ominous tones in deep bass strings and low
woodwinds offer a hint of fear realized in
V for Vendetta, though
the meandering piano performances from the "Valerie" cue in that score
are better transferred to
The Return in several low key moments.
While none of these largely atmospheric cues are unpleasant (the score
is a surprisingly harmonious experience), a few heightened moments of
rhythmic chord alternations in "The Red Bar" and "Memory Lane" are
highlights. The acoustic guitar in the latter cue is a welcomed sense of
warmth that the rest of the score could really have used. Another brief
glimpse of this thematic and instrumental development in "Driving to La
Salle" is engrossing. After this first half, Marianelli succumbs to some
of the cheap thrills of orchestral strikes for moments of sudden scares.
Shrieking strings and full ensemble hits are the standard call of the
frightened, and the strength of
The Return is definitely not in
these moments. As the film demands, however, Marianelli returns to
supernatural contemplations for its final cues, with "Annie Dies" quite
beautiful in its extremely washed out piano performances and sounds of
wind chimes. Still, on the whole, you get the feeling that Marianelli is
capable of much better than this, even given the restrictions of the
genre and the flaws of this particular film. While thematically the
score wraps itself up by the end, it never transcends from point A to
point B. The supernatural journey is lacking a magical punch, even at
subdued volumes, and this stunted emotion is curious given Marianelli's
acute sense of creativity. It's listenable and adequate, but promising
of much more.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
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Bias Check:
For Dario Marianelli reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.64
(in 11 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.33
(in 6,024 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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