Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #1,081
Written 11/22/03, Revised 3/5/09
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Buy it... if you regularly enjoy Gabriel Yared's consistently pleasant,
harmonious, and somber underscores for moderate orchestral ensembles and solo
piano.
Avoid it... if you have no interest in sinking your spirits with a dreary
piece of music for a dreary movie about a dreary character.
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| Yared |
Sylvia: (Gabriel Yared) If not for the use of arthouse venues
to generate awards hopes, one really has to wonder why films like this get the
green light, especially when every educated person entering the theatre knows that
they will be disturbed and saddened when leaving it. The film is a true,
biographical depiction of the marriage between American poet/novelist Sylvia Plath
(Gwyneth Paltrow) and English poet Ted Hughes (Daniel Craig). Anyone knowledgeable
about this most famous literary pairing of the 20th Century is familiar with the
glorious beginning to their partnership as well as their unceremonious end. In
short, after a passionate but rocky marriage, Hughes leaves Plath (who was quite
neurotic to begin with) for another woman, and Plath successfully kills herself by
sticking her head in a gas oven, leaving her brilliant writings and two children
behind. Hughes would live another 35 years after the 1963 suicide of Plath, and he
would largely be blamed for her death over the course of his own successful writing
career. The film accurately follows the glum truths of Plath and Hughes'
co-existence between 1956 and 1963, painfully drawing out the psychological ecstasy
and devastation during lengthy sequences without dialogue. Critics hailed the
film's attention to the topic (a film about Plath and Hughes was likely
inevitable), but the inherently dreary nature of the story, with no redeeming
grace, caused mixed audience reactions to the overall project. The intention of the
film was likely to build upon the dramatic success of The Hours the previous
year, a film in which another famous female author takes her life. When considering
a composer for Sylvia, it would be safe to say that either Philip Glass or
Gabriel Yared could provide a sufficiently classical score for the emotionally
distraught illustrations. The difference between Glass and Yared, though, is that
Yared seemed better equipped to convey the simple, flowing romanticism of the
passionate side of the story without being inclined to convey his ideas in
artistically rhythmic devices. Some mentioned at the time that Jan A. P.
Kaczmarek's subtle melodrama may have been a good match for Sylvia, too.
Interestingly, Yared's score for the film would package his own sensibilities with
a few stylistic similarities to both Glass and Kaczmarek's mannerisms.
Along similar lines, Gabriel Yared composed the Academy
Award-winning score for
The English Patient several years prior to
Sylvia. Both scores exhibit a morbid sense of drama, skillfully extending
the inevitable personal destruction playing out on screen. The music for
Sylvia, however, doesn't feature the same broad scope of orchestral depth,
remaining close to the characters through the use of a collection of personal, solo
performances set over pleasant, though underdeveloped orchestral backing. Among
those featured are performers on cello, oboe, clarinet, cor anglais, and Yared
himself on the piano. Typically, these performers operate with simple themes and
motifs that contain meandering chord progressions of harmonious, but generally
uninteresting progressions. The title theme is so elongated that it comfortably
nestles in with this material without much notice. The rhythms of "The Cows" and
the piano of "The Star" are reminiscent of Glass and Kaczmarek, respectively. The
1950's era of the tale does come to life in the same stark, realistic way that
Elmer Bernstein was able to generate in
Far From Heaven the previous year as
well. This page taken from simpler days grows ominous in "Seeds of Doubt" and
intensifies through "Fire" with heavily quivering and screeching strings. Yared
doesn't follow too obvious a predictable path with
Sylvia, though, because
as Plath is preparing and succeeding in killing herself, the score regresses back
to just a solo piano. The attitude conveyed throughout the score is perhaps a touch
noble, but the most surprising aspect of
Sylvia is Yared's choice (perhaps
directed to him) to keep the highs and lows of the film's emotions absent from the
score. The overall affect of the music, therefore, is one of a consistently dapper
mood, and while the more frightening emotional moments do feature some intense
string work, the more passionate side of the story (in the first half of the score)
seems somewhat lost. The music for "First Meeting" is especially curious in its
lack of romantic spark. Thus, the score becomes a dreary piece of music for a
dreary movie about a dreary character. As a 45-minute listening experience, it
ranks about average in Yared's collection of works, but if you're at all familiar
with the horrific display of human failures in the story, then the album for
Sylvia could be just as depressing as the film itself.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
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Bias Check:
For Gabriel Yared reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.11
(in 10 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.17
(in 19,486 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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