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Review of The Return (Dario Marianelli)

FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:

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.

FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:

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.  ***

TRACK LISTINGS:

Total Time: 34:51

• 1. Sweet Dreams - performed by Patsy Cline (2:38) • 2. The Girl With Two Souls (3:48) • 3. Collision (2:11) • 4. Present and Past (1:04) • 5. The Red Bar (2:14) • 6. Memory Lane (1:18) • 7. Terry Warms Up (2:22) • 8. A Close Shave (1:48)

• 9. Driving to La Salle (1:45) • 10. The Other Woman (1:29) • 11. Griff's Garage (1:13) • 12. Old Things (1:34) • 13. Cornered (2:41) • 14. Annie Dies (2:43) • 15. What Really Happened (2:13) • 16. Sea Horses (3:50)

NOTES & QUOTES:

The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.

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