: (Benjamin Wallfisch) A Ron Howard
drama originally set to debut on the big screen but eventually released
mostly via Amazon streaming,
is the biographical
tale of the 2018 Tham Luang cave rescue. That feat resulted after a
soccer team of local boys took an unscheduled detour to explore the Tham
Luang Nang Non caves in the northern part of Thailand. A freak rainstorm
flooded the cave complex and trapped the boys and their coach within,
forcing Thai Navy SEALs and British diving experts to rescue them over
the following three weeks using unconventional methods. The story was an
international sensation, and other than the death of one of the SEALs,
the rescue was declared a success as the team was extracted alive.
Although the tale had already been told in a documentary before, Howard
sought to approach its drama from a more cinematic viewpoint without
overemphasizing the emotional element to a sappy, Hollywood end. His
efforts were largely considered a success, though
struggled to gain traction with audiences more interested in lighter
summer fluff. One of the trickier elements of the picture was its
soundtrack, which did employ regional source music as necessary but also
required a score that Howard wished to defy norms. He specifically
sought to avoid overly sentimental or manipulative music, instead
focusing on using the score a tool of abstraction, disorientation, and
chaos. He initially sought the advice of his regular collaborator of
many years, Hans Zimmer, who appropriately recommended the ascendant
Benjamin Wallfisch for the assignment. Howard and Wallfisch hashed
through extensive strategic approaches to the score over several months,
seeking ways to incorporate Thai influences, experimental electronic
suspense techniques, and just enough of a touch of drama to suffice for
the human element. Wallfisch is adept at exactly this kind of merging,
for he applied similar traits to his music for the 2014 film,
is
very much telegraphed by that prior work. In fact, if you swap out the
Indian ethnic influences for Thai ones and crank up the manipulation of
the electronic aspects in
, you
essentially receive the same score again, even down to the cello and
keyboarded main theme of quiet contemplation.
The result of Wallfisch's strategic sessions with
Howard and his own research into the region is a score for
Thirteen
Lives that is highly compartmentalized. In its three parts, the
music addresses the somber dramatic element, the largely synthetic
suspense, and the minimally present ethnic influences in between. Those
Thai-centric instruments include contributions by a trio of Bangkok
performers on a two-stringed saw duang, a bamboo flute, a lute, and a
mouth organ. Wallfisch goes further by referencing a traditional
regional tune contributed by Thai music expert Natt Buntita, who
provided vocals to the song adaptation of that piece, "Soh Long Nan,"
featured over the end credits. As a whole, however, the score is never
comfortable in any of its three facets, a tepid thematic adaptation of
that traditional tune's progressions not able to hold the narrative
together. Performed most frequently by sparse piano and cello with
minimal string backing, the main theme is established in "Thirteen
Lives" but disappears outside of brief glimpses in "Navy SEALs" until
the first boy is rescued in "White Umbrella" and in the closing duo of
"All But One" and "Reunion." Only by the later cue does Wallfisch afford
some warmth in the depth of the accompaniment to this melody, "Reunion"
a promising but still restrained expression of tonal relief. Echoes of
the composer's 2017 success,
Bitter Harvest, struggle to shine
through in this cue. Otherwise,
Thirteen Lives is a mostly cold
and unfriendly work, even when the main melody is provided. The Thai
performers do provide nice coloration to the recording at times, but
their contributions seem undermixed. (Some listeners may note that the
mix of the entire score in the film is rather muted, but the stance of
the original recording is extremely restrained to begin with.) A greater
presence for the saw duang and flute in the pretty "Tham Luang" setting
cue would have been merited, if only to accentuate the beauty of a
landscape that could so quickly take lives with a simple shift of the
weather. (He does emphasize it well in "Navy SEALs.") The same could be
said of the slight dread in the atmosphere of "Rain" and "Flood," which
exhibits similarities to minimalistic James Horner electronics. As these
tones get progressively more ominous in the score, the deeply troubling
passages of Wallfisch's
The Invisible Man begin to emerge, with
electronic manipulation of deep pulses and sudden ceasing of sound
causing much of the same consternation.
For the lengthy suspense passages that make up most of
the middle portions of
Thirteen Lives, the composer explicitly
experiments with the manipulation of the Thai instruments and vocals to
plunge them into the perception of an underwater setting, particularly
in "First Customer." Joining them are those extremely deep pulses from
The Invisible Man that will still test the quality of your
subwoofers, along with a number of sound effects that Wallfisch created
using oxygen canisters, emulating their banging, scraping, and hissing
effects through extreme digital manipulation. These applications in
"Oxygen" are totally unlistenable on album, applied aggressively and
outside of any accessible rhythmic sensibility. The suspense material
during the actual rescue is somewhat mindless, "Everyone Leaves Today"
setting a pace and applying swishing electronic stingers but failing to
build any sense of momentum or anticipation. In the really unpleasant
"Dive," the composer applies ultra-high tones along with his low pulses,
making one wonder if this cue is a hearing test. Howard praised
Wallfisch's endurance during the creation of these cues, but the end
result is a slight and marginally effective score that has all the
hallmarks of directorial dreams of experimentation gone wrong. Howard is
so far removed from his days collaborating with James Horner that he
seems to have forgotten how film scores can truly enhance a picture by
being more active in the narrative. By taking a highly dramatic rescue
story about human perseverance and demanding that Wallfisch address it
atmospherically and with dissonant indifference, Howard eliminates the
score's potential to involve the audience at a deeper level and provide
satisfaction via the music alone. He has spoken of wanting to address
the beauty of the region, and yet there is only solemn survival,
marginal relief, and a near constant sense of dread in this music that
does nothing to further that interest. In the end, Wallfisch's score is
only minimally effective for its context and makes for a short,
unsettling, and distant listening experience on album. Film score
collectors wishing to hear the composer provide a more engaging and
relatable score along the same lines should explore
Bhopal: A Prayer
for Rain instead. Both works even feature a similarly toned,
in-language song for female vocalist, and yet "Soh Long Nan" simply
cannot escape ruin by the electronic manipulation that defines much of
Thirteen Lives. Aside from portions of "Rescue," expect this
score to underwhelm you with the sour demeanor demanded of it by the
director in a disappointing strategic blunder.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
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| Bias Check: |
For Benjamin Wallfisch reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.36
(in 14 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.18
(in 3,493 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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