: (James Horner) There's nothing radically
new in the hardship story within Antoine Fuqua's 2015 sports drama
, a boxing redemption tale originally meant for rapper
Eminem but eventually starring Jake Gyllenhaal instead. The champion
boxer's wife is killed during a confrontation at an event and his
downward spiral of depressions leads to the loss of his daughter and
home. Through one second chance with a new trainer, however, he works
towards redeeming himself through the defeat of a rival connected with
his wife's death. The gritty, introspective atmosphere of
, along with Gyllenhaal's transformative performance, are
the main attraction in an otherwise drab picture, and the movie was a
fiscal success. Due to its rather minimal budget, Fuqua had planned to
return to his collaborator on
, Harry
Gregson-Williams, to provide the music for the film. The director had a
fruitful collaboration with Hans Zimmer and his associates through the
years (Gregson-Williams joining Mark Mancina and Trevor Morris), but
when veteran drama composer James Horner offered to Fuqua that he's
produce a score for free for
, the director could not
resist. Horner was moved by the story to such an extent that he insisted
that he needed to write the music for it, regardless of the fact that he
would have to cover all his crews' costs out of his own pocket. Horner
was thus granted the job and produced a synthetic work produced by just
a small group of his core team. Eminem's presence in the songs for the
film was retained along the way. For Horner collectors,
represents the composer's final fully recorded score completed prior to
his sudden death in a June 2015 plane accident. While he had written
was chronologically Horner's
final finished work for the screen. His 2014 and 2015 was immensely
fruitful after taking some time off from major scoring, his last year
offering his fans a multitude of scores and concert works as a parting
gift of sorts. While
is certainly not going to be
remembered as the best of Horner's 2015 releases (it may very well end
up being his worst-selling album of the year, including the concert
works), it neatly ties up the thread associated with the electronic
scores in his career.
While the composer saw the rough edges of
Southpaw's story as his newest enticement, Horner's music has
often embraced not only that introverted side but done so largely
electronically. The learned collector of his music will actually hear
little new in
Southpaw, aside from some borrowed mechanisms from
the Remote Control library that are understandable given the trends of
the time. The score's presence in the film isn't monumental but rather
an extension of the hazy, depressing environment in which the main
character finds himself. Indeed, Gregson-Williams could have written a
substantively similar score that would have functioned about as well on
screen. Horner does have a knack for capturing the drama of a situation
with his melodic and tonal sensibilities, however, and he steers the
score more towards the romantic element at times than Gregson-Williams
may have. While some mentions of the music have suggested that there
exists blend of orchestra and synthetics for
Southpaw, the score
actually sounds entirely electronic with the exception of a piano,
making use of the composer's past sampled libraries to yield what sounds
like a highly refined demo recording at times. Credits information for
the film and soundtrack also point to no orchestral presence. Although
definitely fine-tuned through the years, the sampled sounds of Horner's
choosing can not only be identified in
Southpaw, but they can be
traced back to scores like
Unlawful Entry (a sister score for
this one in terms of piano/electronics balance) and
The Name of the
Rose. More recently, some of the synthetic textures for Horner will
raise comparisons with
Beyond Borders in the more abrasive
portions and
The Life Before Her Eyes in the droning ambient
ones. The latter score also exhibits the composer's ability to pull some
very understated tonal highlights out of the fog for the most important
scenes in the film. It's intriguing that at least one major review of
Southpaw as a film pointed to Horner's score as a detriment
during the sensitive character interaction scenes, indicating that the
music overwhelmed the scenes. Don't expect to hear outward melodrama
suggested by such comments, though, outside of the pair of most
redemptive cues featuring a singular theme that Horner introduces for
the few rays of light in the that do exist. Otherwise, be prepared for a
cold, sometimes brutal listening experience, one familiar to veteran
Horner listeners who know that the composer had a history of painting
gruesome sonic landscapes when needed.
Undoubtedly,
Southpaw is a score dominated by
the piano at it heart, stereotypically representing the familial element
driving the film's plot. Horner had always utilized the instrument as
the sound of lament, and there's certainly that point being made here.
Surrounding it is the full range of the composer's synthetic string
washes, somewhat grainy woodwind replacements, tubular bell samples,
clicking percussion from
Thunderheart and others, and solo
trumpet sound, along with an array of purely manipulated sound effects,
most of which reminiscent of some usage in a prior Horner work. Most
brazenly new is the Hans Zimmer foghorn effect blasted forth in the
opening cue, though that won't give you as much of a headache as the
pulsating drones in "Training." Melodically, there's actually quite a
lot happening in
Southpaw even though it may seem on the surface
to be a monothematic score. The main theme is a series of two note pairs
that are extremely stark in their loyal piano presentation, beginning
immediately and stretching through the final cue. Horner allows this
theme to be tormented endlessly in the score, dissolving it into a
descending four-note phrase in the likes of "Suicidal Rampage" and "A
Cry for Help." It does inspire the one synthetic full ensemble drama
sequence near the culmination of "Hope vs. Escobar" during which a live,
organic group of players would have been nice to have (this score's
equivalent of Danny Elfman's
Real Steel finale fight cue). The
main theme remains cold until the end, though, leaving Horner's
secondary family theme to carry the true heart of the work. Hinted in "A
More Normal Life," this idea is pure Horner melodrama on piano in "House
Auction," "A Long Road Back," "How Much They Miss Her," with the
performance about a minute into "A Long Road Back" emulating the best of
melodic grace from
Avatar and others. These portions save the
listening experience on album from an otherwise totally drab
presentation, even if they are short in duration by comparison. Between
these moments and the typical secondary, free-floating piano motifs akin
to
To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday for the composer,
Southpaw has enough appeal to recommend to a Horner enthusiast
even without the added incentive of this score coming at the end of his
life. Do not expect the kind of warmth that comes with some of Horner's
other dramas of this understated variety; instead, seek the resonance of
something along the lines of
The Life Before Her Eyes for
comparison. On first pass,
Southpaw may be an underwhelming,
occasionally irritating listening experience, but further examination
will reveal ten minutes of worthy melodic material that mostly survives
its synthetic backing.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
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| Bias Check: |
For James Horner reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.17
(in 103 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.26
(in 194,054 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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