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Review of The Tailor of Panama (Shaun Davey)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you long for a truly unique score, because The Tailor of
Panama is one of those obscure entries that will surprise you with its
cohesive and occasionally infectious thematic, rhythmic, and ethnic diversity.
Avoid it... if a bizarre merging of Stephen Warbeck's Shakespeare in Love, Jerry Goldsmith's Under Fire, and Rachel Portman's Chocolat sounds like too much trouble for you.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
The Tailor of Panama: (Shaun Davey) Any enthusiast of author
John Le Carre can provide you with a long list of Hollywood motion pictures that
have shamelessly butchered his stories in the process of their adaptation. In an
effort to rectify that situation, Columbia Pictures allowed Le Carre to serve as
both an advisor to the screenplay and executive producer for The Tailor of
Panama, one of the better films from the wildly inconsistent director John
Boorman. With a story of espionage and intrigue between the governments of the
United Kingdom and Panama in which Pierce Brosnan stars as a British spy not
popular with MI6, The Tailor of Panama caused many audiences to expect that
the film would adhere to the normal boundaries of the James Bond franchise. That's
definitely not the case, but using this appeal as a peripheral marketing tool, the
production was highly touted as a late spring blockbuster in 2001, with a strong
supporting cast, clever story, and an exotic setting to boot. But as abruptly as
the press and advertisements for this film ended in April of that year, it
disappeared from theatres as a stunning loss, forcing audiences to seek arthouse or
older theatres to see it. The cause of the film's failure still remains open to
debate, but even more curious is the consequent obscurity of Shaun Davey's
high-impact score for the film, a score that quietly passed without any significant
fan comments or review coverage at the time of its album release. The shame about
the failure of the film is that it didn't give Davey the career boost that he could
have used to exhibit his talents for a larger international audience. He had only
scored very few feature films in the previous five or so years, and was (and still
is, to a large degree) best known for the scores to the British films Waking Ned
Devine and Twelfth Night. Although the latter score had been released on
a somewhat obscure Silva Screen album, the majority of film music collectors were
unfamiliar with his work because The Tailor of Panama represented his first
major American project. It was with high hopes that this Boorman film, regardless
of its box office failure, would change that situation. Despite the score's
extremely appealing strengths, however, it ultimately did little to advance the
composer's career.
In the most basic sense, the style of Davey's compositions is naturally similar in its lyrical and light-hearted personality to that of Stephan Warbeck, who had already won over the world with his music for Shakespeare in Love. Davey's close regard to the classical construction of his music, and his prior experience in the scoring of Shakespearean stories, put him in the same musical league as Warbeck and Patrick Doyle. These parallels in composition can be heard in The Tailor of Panama, especially during the several grandiose, fully orchestral performances of governmental fanfares contained within. The title theme and its underlying rhythm (a dedicated motif for the element of intrigue throughout the score) both exude a flash of pomp and spirit that could very well accompany a Shakespearean drama, but the score is ultimately saved by a balance of this lyrical bravado and Davey's keen insertion of Latin elements into the mix. No better of an example of this exotic combination is the cue "Harry's Drive Through the Carnival," which melds a fantastically verbose performance of the adapted melody to "Todavia Cantamos" on strings with an exuberant flair of acoustic guitar. The influence of Victor Heredia's "Todavia Cantamos" remains consistent throughout the work, often informing cues that explore variations on the theme. Davey restrains the adaptation to a troubled viola solo in "Louisa's Confrontation and The Death of Micky Abraxis," exhibiting the impressive flexibility in manipulation heard in each of the score's ideas and contributing to a very cohesive whole. The original theme representing the title character delicately flutters in the score's opening and closing moments, also sometimes existing in slightly dissonant variants (such as the start of "Harry Unravels"). Its functionally is overshadowed by its rhythmic counterpart, a bass motif that Davey consistently uses to represent the element of espionage and adventure in the plot. Davey showed flashes of this kind of heavy, bass-oriented orchestral rhythm in Twelfth Night, but he never expanded upon it for that project. For The Tailor of Panama, however, Davey dwells on this single, simplistic bass string progression, accenting each measure with a blast of the low woodwinds, brass, harpsichord, and even an accordion for additional power. Together, all of the rumbling, lower range elements of the orchestra prevail to set a rambling, ominous tone for the pace of the story. It's a great rhythm-setting device given the genre, and while some may find the idea tedious and droning, it's rather easy to adopt it as motivational inspiration. The final major element of The Tailor of Panama is its Latin flavor, which Davey accomplishes through the use of acoustic guitars and several choices of orchestration and thematic progression. At times, as in the wildly infectious "The Vibrating Bed," Davey kicks the guitar into full gear and produces a result not far from Rachel Portman's more comical moments of Chocolat. During the action sequences, and especially in "The Ambassador, the Chase, and the Helicopter," one could get the impression that this score is also an undeniably fun cross between Warbeck's Shakespeare in Love and Jerry Goldsmith's Under Fire. Even with the Latin elements expressing themselves fluently throughout, the score never becomes too ethnically foreign for those who would rather attach themselves to the classical structure of the rest of the score. Davey's greatest accomplishment here is his ability to take all of the different aspects of his music for The Tailor of Panama and bring them together in a fabulous crescendo as the film reaches its exciting climax. In very few scores do you hear this kind of rhythmic effectiveness, with the score's momentum constantly maintaining your interest. The final track offers a surprising rendition of the "Todavia Cantamos" theme with a longing female vocal performance that steals the show in a way that would have been further welcomed had it been worked into a few sequences earlier. Overall, the careful balance between the grand, free flowing themes, the Latin guitar and keyboards, and the rhythmic orchestral bass is very well handled in The Tailor of Panama. The music has a little bit of everything, and yet it stands together so well as a whole that you wish other scores could balance themselves with equal success. It's potentially a "hit or miss" kind of prospect, meaning that it could completely leave some listeners out in the cold due to its flair for the melodramatic and its occasionally bizarre ethnic diversity. One can only wonder how the Irish Film Orchestra managed to pull off such a convincing Central American performance, but they did it, and The Tailor of Panama on album is a guilty pleasure in waiting for many film score collectors. ****
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 48:46
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
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