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Goldsmith |
Rudy: (Jerry Goldsmith) For viewers who consider
the 1986 masterpiece
Hoosiers to be the sports film with the
greatest heart that cinema has ever seen,
Rudy presents many
solid arguments to reside in second place. The crew of
Hoosiers,
including director David Anspaugh and writer Angelo Pizzo, reunited
seven years later for
Rudy, conveying many of the same underdog
elements of a very personal nature while ensuring that the sports scenes
are restrained enough to maintain the film's placement outside of the
stereotypical sports genre. The story of
Rudy follows the
real-life 1970's journey of Daniel Ruettiger, whose youthful dream of
playing football for the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame was countered by
the reality of poor grades and marginal athletic ability. With the
passion of his heart, however, he managed to be assigned to the practice
squad for the team and, in the final game of the season and after
becoming extremely popular for his determination, he enters a Notre Dame
game for a few plays at the end, sacks the opposing quarterback, and
remains the last player to be carried off the field by his team. While
the quality of
Rudy may not equal
Hoosiers, its an equally
lovable variant of the same concept, and the role of Jerry Goldsmith's
music in both films is pivotal to their success. Goldsmith had been
asking Anspaugh and Pizzo for another
Hoosiers-like project for
years, and while
Rudy scratched that itch for both the composer
and his fans, Goldsmith would pass away just a year before an
opportunity for a third collaboration would present itself in 2005
(
The Game of Their Lives). The highly predictable outcome and
feel-good subject matter made
Rudy a mockery for many film
critics to feast on, and although the film has its fair share of faults
due to its simplicity, the score is no slacker. Goldsmith's ability to
merge the heart of a personal journey with the adversity of a sports
environment is masterful, resulting in music that has been used for
everything from the Academy Awards and John McCain's 2008 presidential
campaign to the National Football League itself. In short, if you're
looking for an inspirational orchestral score, there are few that can
compete with
Rudy.
Interestingly, Goldsmith's score has also come under an
unfair share of criticism and has experienced a slight backlash due to
its immense popularity. One published argument against it many years ago
claimed that the score is a softly repetitive, non-complex, and bland
piece of music. Others have criticized the score and album for not
including enough Irish spirit or simply the theme song for the Fighting
Irish of Notre Dame. Most of these arguments, however, come from the
mainstream, a mass that doesn't much care for Goldsmith's early 1990's
habit of concentrating on character scores like
Angie,
Love
Field, and
Forever Young. As for the complaints about a lack
of Irish flavor, Goldsmith integrates hints of old Irish influence into
the swing of his secondary theme for the football sequences, leading to
some general similarities between the rhythmic movement of this theme in
Rudy and the far more verbose variant of the same idea to be
heard in
The Ghost and the Darkness. There is some merit to
criticism about
Rudy's simplicity; the score is really nothing
more than an alternation between its two primary themes. Not a cue on
the album passes without either one of the two themes in performance,
and as such, the short length of the album is quite welcomed. Both
themes have merits, though one easily overshadows the other. The weaker
is ironically the title theme, representing the heart of the title
character during his journey. The most robust performances of this
tender theme exist in "Main Title," which is actually heard over the end
titles in the film (the real opening cue is not provided on the jumbled
album), and the climactic performance in "The Final Game." While the
theme utilizes the same pleasant woodwind performances of a score like
Powder, Goldsmith here emphasizes the larger than life
aspirations of Rudy with a light choral accompaniment. The choral
contribution in the two aforementioned cues is sometimes mixed so
conservatively that you can barely determine its presence, and this very
slight handling of the fantasy element continues until a full burst at
the end of the film. Some listeners will find this theme too sappy for
enjoyment, and if you don't typically appreciate Goldsmith's highly
personal woodwind themes of the era, then you'll easily favor the more
memorable secondary theme in the score.
The most attractive parts of
Rudy exhibit the
rhythmically charging, optimistic theme for the football sequences
themselves. Just as Goldsmith used a secondary theme in
Hoosiers
to anticipate and drive the action on the basketball court, he creates a
theme and accompanying rhythm that builds in intensity throughout the
score as Rudy comes closer to realizing his dream. While only suggested
in "A Start," the theme begins innocently (as Rudy watches the practice
scrimmages of the Notre Dame team) with solo woodwind in "Waiting"
before handing off to solo trumpet and eventually involving the entire
ensemble in subsequent cues. In "Back on the Field" and "Tryouts," the
theme is accompanied by rumbling timpani and (eventually) tambourine,
with the string and brass sections alternating primary and counterpoint
statements of the deliberate, but powerful progression. By the final
game of the season, heard in "Take Us Out" and "The Final Game," this
theme is joined by snare rips and a significantly more anxious tempo.
This theme so well balances the competitive spirit of the game with the
fierce determination of Rudy that the maturation of this theme
throughout the score is one of the highlights of Goldsmith's later
career. The ambitious merging of the two primary themes in "The Final
Game" would cause the performing ensemble to give the composer a
standing ovation at the end of the recording of that cue. The affect of
the score on the film is, as with
Hoosiers, immeasurable, and the
score is a necessary inclusion for any Goldsmith collector.
Additionally, it has been suggested that the theme that Goldsmith wrote
for the football sequences in
Rudy is the best ever written to
represent the game, regardless of the college or professional level. In
2006, NBC commissioned John Williams to write a theme for their newly
acquired Sunday Night Football broadcasts, and while adequate in its
task, its trumpet-heavy flair has never seemed appropriate for the bold
brutality of the sport. Anyone who has heard the cue "Take Us Out" from
Rudy could likely make a strong argument that these two minutes
of music would much better serve as an orchestral football anthem. On
the whole, this score may not have the powerful appeal of
Hoosiers, but it remains one of the more remarkable
sports-related scores ever written.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
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Bias Check: |
For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.29
(in 113 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.31
(in 144,191 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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