Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #1,711
Written 12/29/09, Revised 1/17/11
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Buy it... if an extremely conservative and alienating combination
of tone, instrumentation, and rhythm typical to the scores of Clint
Mansell, Jon Brion, and Philip Glass is your ticket to deep, quiet, and
meaningful contemplation.
Avoid it... if you have feelings of guilt, worthlessness,
helplessness, pessimism, emptiness, anxiety, or hopelessness, in
addition to suicidal thoughts, appetite loss, fatigue, persistent aches,
excessive sleeping, or loss of interest in activities or hobbies once
pleasurable, including sex.
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| Martinez |
Solaris: (Cliff Martinez) As good as the two
adaptations of Stanislaw Lem's original novel may be considered by
critics, neither the 1972 Andrei Tarkovsky or 2002 Steven Soderbergh
screen adaptations of Solaris really represented the broader
focus of the book. Still, they are extremely thought-provoking
explorations of identity and psychology, using the genre of science
fiction as a mere tool to study how people interact with those they
perceive to be around them. The story takes place on a space station
orbiting a distant planet, but not any ordinary one. The planet has the
ability to replicate realistic representations of those familiar to
anyone onboard the station, but only as realistic as the crew members'
memories of those people can be. When this disruption causes panic and
death on the station, a psychiatrist (played by George Clooney)
investigates and is confronted with a replication of his dead wife. He
spends the rest of the film grappling with his relationship with this
dead, but awkwardly living, physical being, as well as trying to sort
out disparate stories about what happened to the rest of the station's
crew from the two original survivors. It's an intimate character study
that didn't have enough standard, glitzy science fiction or fantasy
appeal to translate its critical success into fiscal revenue (turning a
$47 million budget into a paltry $15 million in grosses). Soderbergh
admits in hindsight that an arthouse science fiction film was nearly
impossible to market, despite the fact that he had condensed Tarkovsky's
version down by over an hour. Likewise, Solaris proved to be a
difficult assignment to reconcile for any composer involved in the
project. The typical bombast or large orchestral tones of the genre
would not suffice, and the dreamy, other-worldly aspect of the film's
personality precluded a bloated, romantic affair from the same
orchestra. Thus, the only alternative for Soderbergh was his high
opinion of sound design, and he relied upon his usual collaborator,
composer Cliff Martinez, to explicitly emulate the style of Gyorgy
Ligeti (among other temp track inspirations) for an extremely
conservative, atmospheric approach. By mixing orchestral shades with
foreign specialty instrumentation and electronics, Martinez was able to
address both the warmth felt between the film's real and not-so-real
leads and the foreign environment that produced the story's freaky
dilemma. Understatement was obviously Martinez's goal, and to that end
he produced a score that meanders and groans in the background with
subtle ease. His work is an intriguing merging of Clint Mansell and Jon
Brion's sensibilities at the time, and it's not going to awaken anyone
from a slumber.
Given Martinez's career experience with percussion,
it's not surprising that the orchestra for
Solaris, which
consists of mostly strings but also utilizes a few brass and woodwind
accents, takes a secondary roll to a gamelan ensemble of bells, gongs,
and drums (from Indonesia), as well as celesta and steel drum. While the
challenging atmosphere of dissonance, in conjunction with the
instrumental choices, may resemble Mansell and Brion, the structures of
the score seem heavily influenced by Philip Glass. Everything in the
work is cyclical, rhythmically churning on the gamelan elements in
nearly each cue. The only alterations from cue to cue involve the
relationship between these atonal rhythms and the weaving of the
orchestra, the two general sides of the score constantly juggling
romance and apprehension. Neither of these two sides is particularly
appealing, but their interaction does seem to follow ebbs and flows
throughout the otherwise non-descript work. The score only very rarely
shifts in harmonic progressions (the final minutes of "First Sleep"
among the few examples), and melodic consistency is almost completely
obscured by the hazy and bleak tone of the performances. Because the
score is extremely cold and distancing apart from the film, it's likely
to raise the usual questions about whether Martinez provided Soderbergh
with music or sound effects. Enthusiasts of the film consider the score
a form of high art, a stark but appropriate representation of the mental
agony and subsequent coping witnessed on screen. How the score for
Solaris can carry any kind of appreciation outside of that cult
following remains a curiosity, because for most film score collectors,
this music will function better than the leading brand of sleep pills.
At 43:00 minutes in length, the album will seem insufferably long unless
you can allow yourself to become absorbed in its atmosphere. The
11-minute cue "Hi Energy Proton Accelerator" moves so excruciatingly
slowly through its basic chord shifts that perhaps some interest could
result if you listened to it at five times its normal playback speed. A
handful of listeners will excuse Martinez's music for
Solaris
because it matches the attitude of the film (or because it is simply
different from the norm). The problem with that thinking is that the
composer had a chance to transcend a simple and safe match for the film
and
enhance the narrative through far more creative and risky
melodic and instrumental choices. Instead, he took the conservative
route, one that ultimately translates into an incredibly boring album
for those not interested in the film. Superb Records debuted the score
in America in 2002 and re-issued it Europe in 2008. La-La Land Records
remastered and re-issued it again domestically in early 2011, and all
three presentations are identical in contents and equally effective as a
sleeping aid.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
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