Filmtracks: Sunshine (Maurice Jarre)

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Written 9/8/22

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Buy it... if your love of Maurice Jarre's early classics leads you to this late-career reprise of that majestic orchestral sound, the classically symphonic highlights of this work undeniably attractive.

Avoid it... if you expect the score to sustain its superior melodic form outside of the opening and closing suite arrangements, the midsection decent but not spectacular.

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Sunshine: (Maurice Jarre) Targeted as awards bait late in 1999, Sunshine is an immensely lavish historical drama spanning several generations of the fictional Hungarian Jewish Sonnenschein family from the middle of the 19th Century into most of the 20th. Their path through the world wars was by no means easy, much of the family wiped out in savage ways and losing a disturbing degree of its heritage in the process. The film is a socio-political history lesson, the region forcing the family to change names, turn on their compatriots, and endure needless death. A touch of adultery and incest help things along, as always. Actor Ralph Fiennes notably plays the male lead in three generations of the story, the mothers of the family apparently having little impact on the looks of their boys. Ultimately, there is some hope in the resurrection of the Sonnenschein family brand, but the cost is high. With the critical responses respectful but tepid, Sunshine snagged a few minor awards nominations but could not recoup anywhere near its budget during its release, the film labeled as a glitzy failure. While much of the cast and crew was native to Eastern Europe, the production turned to famed French composer Maurice Jarre to provide the music for Sunshine. The composer had spent much of the previous two decades experimenting with electronic film scores, far removed from the immense orchestral majesty that brought him fame and awards recognition in the 1960's. He had also suffered a series of rejected scores in the 1980's and especially 1990's that were uncharacteristic, and he took some time away from film scoring in the late 1990's. For suffering enthusiasts of Jarre's vintage dramatic sound of Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, Sunshine represented a long overdue, wholesale return to orchestral beauty, though his career only lasted another two scores before his retirement. The joy and relief this work brought to collectors of classic Jarre is sullied by an unsatisfactory album presentation that features little more than half an hour of truly unique music despite the immense, three-hour running time of the movie. Some of the lack of thematic development expressed in this review, therefore, is an artifact of the brief and somewhat frustrating album release.

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There is nary a synthesizer to be obviously heard in Sunshine, Jarre recording a sizable orchestra in Berlin and layering solo and group vocals for one cue. The work is undeniably classical in nature, the composer utilizing his ensemble in ways that audiences would expect from the period. The orchestrations of the more lyrical passages are excellent, enhanced by a truly vibrant and wet recording mix. Rolling saxophone ascents in "Carol & Ivan" are nice coloration for suspense, and the solo and ensemble vocals in the final cue are certainly classy, but Jarre otherwise keeps the score traditional in its symphonic sound. A solo trumpet performs three of the score's themes in the suite arrangement, "Sunshine," but does not contribute significantly to the remainder. Solo piano is a little more consistent, and its presence is always gorgeous. (A piano rhapsody opens "Sunshine" wonderfully.) Much of the dramatic weight of the work relies on fluffy strings and woodwinds, even as the tone strays towards darker territory. The composer's assignment of themes is decent but does present some frustrations, as two of the score's themes bookend the work as a representation of the Sonnenschein family name that is replaced, along with the identity that came with it, for the entire middle of the film. Those two Sunshine family themes are joined by a waltz theme for location and legacy, a theme specifically for the women and romance of the tale, and a final identity for war and competition. For the Sunshine family, Jarre provides a two-part idea that could be considered two themes, but neither one exists outside of "Sunshine" and "The Sonnenscheins." The primary Sunshine theme is ascendant and hopeful, starting and ending on key. It debuts at 0:30 into "Sunshine" in bright orchestral colors, highlighted by solo trumpet leads, and returns at 1:42 and experiences fuller, almost religious power with timpani at 2:55. The secondary Sunshine theme is more dynamic, with gorgeous underlying chords. It has a more prominent impact on "Sunshine," beginning at 0:48 on solo trumpet, softer at 2:12, majestic at 3:12 over rumbling timpani, and climaxing at 4:17 with massive ensemble emphasis and ringing triangle under solo trumpet. These attractive themes are not utilized in the most prominent mid-section cues, and they disappear completely on the album presentation outside of the mostly redundant opening and closing tracks. Still, the undeniable quality of these arrangements is so engrossing that the score largely succeeds because of them alone.

The more dominant waltz and women's themes in Sunshine are used by Jarre to hold the score together. The former, for location and legacy, uses formal waltz phrasing as the interlude sequence to the Sunshine family themes in the suite. In that "Sunshine" track, it is heard at 1:07 and 1:43 on woodwinds over plucked strings, 1:24 on solo trumpet, 2:19 with more ensemble weight, and finally building to a big trumpet solo at 2:35. It persists at 0:06 into "Valerie" on piano and strings, interjecting with suspense at 2:12. The waltz theme opens "To the Ghetto" on tentative clarinet in shrouds of mystery, a fragment struggling to be involved at 3:22 before an abbreviated piano rendition at 3:51. It shifts to solo piano at 0:32 into "Adam, the Fencing Champion" and becomes tentative at 3:26 before building to a briefly flowing rendition and concluding with a major performance at 5:39 that offers more classical flourishes. A solo piano carries the theme at 3:18 into "Carol & Ivan." Often mingling with the waltz theme is the one for the story's women and romance in Sunshine, a rolling and pastoral idea that borrows some phrasing from the Sunshine family themes. It is previewed at 3:37 into "Sunshine," followed by its own, brief interlude sequence, and returns at 3:57 in even more flowing enthusiasm. It shines at 1:03 into "Valerie" in whimsical shades, repeating optimistically for most of the cue. The theme is heard faintly at 1:05 into "To the Ghetto" on soft clarinet, gains hope at 2:16 and 3:34, and yields to solo trumpet sadness over string dissonance at 4:56. It's conveyed twice at 6:26 into "Adam, the Fencing Champion" on solo horn and in light, flowery flavors at 3:53 into "Carol & Ivan" prior to becoming stern and cloudy later; a solo cello at 5:10 in that cue extends some hope to the theme, with its original interlude explored some more. Finally, Jarre's war and competition theme is a brassy, stately militaristic march that dominates "War and Misery," extends softly at 3:02 into "To the Ghetto" in turbulence, and becomes more fluid at the start of "Adam, the Fencing Champion." Despite these many themes, the middle portion of Sunshine cannot sustain the lyrical superiority of the bookending cues. "The Sonnenscheins" is simply a reprise of the suite but with vocals, so the grandiose portions of this score amount to less than ten minutes on album. That product has been long derided, its short length exacerbated by terrible crossfades between the opening two tracks and in the middle of "War and Misery." The highlights of Sunshine are a magnificent return to Jarre's top, vintage form, however, and they alone justify the album. **** @Amazon.com: CD or Download

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