: (Elliot Goldenthal) If you think artists today have a
hard time breaking onto the scene in mainstream entertainment, just think how
difficult it must have been for William Shakespeare, who conjured "Titus
Andronicus" early in his career to help make a name for himself. The gruesome
tragedy, which is so disgusting in its lack of mores or hero that it becomes a
laugh-fest, is a story that revels in every element of gore and excess. It is
best known for its themes of body mutilation and how humor that can arise from
rape and severed body parts. Julie Taymor's adaptation of the story, starring
Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lange, is set in ancient Rome, but not a historically
accurate one. She builds upon the vast swings of tragedy and comedy by also
blurring the time period in which the story is taking place, availing herself of
every opportunity to insert modern tanks, radios, pool tables, and even the
Popemobile into the narrative. It's a sort of mockery of the kind of timelessness
that fantasy films like Tim Burton's
attempt to achieve, but in
this case, the out of place elements are inserted with grandiose, in-your-face
intentions. Critical response to the film was mostly positive, with Taymor's
creativity winning the hearts of critics who had thought that they had seen it
all. Audiences were less enthusiastic, however, with many of them not
understanding Shakespeare's disparity of tragedy and comedy to enough of a degree
to understand why some scenes are funny and others are not. Taymor, of course,
turned to her husband to create the score of limitless potential; the two would
collaborate for an Academy Award win for
two years later. As he
would for
. In the process, he heard ancient choral music in
his mind while also hearing a variety of contemporary music throughout Rome
(including Elvis, of course) as he traveled by car. Thus, he had the basic idea
for his score.
To stylishly reflect the awkward disparity between tragedy and
comedy, as well as the disparity between ancient and modern visual elements in
the film, Goldenthal would simply follow the same path of disparity and infuse
several genres of music into one score. He opens the film with exactly the kind
of magnificent, bombastic, choral music that you would expect for the basic
setting, and then he slowly strips away that common denominator as he introduces
more and more eclectic genres into the environment. Jazz, heavy metal,
neo-classicism, swing, and, of course, Goldenthal's own atonal, dreary ambient
tendencies would all prevail in portions of the work. Melodramatic, troubled
adagios of extremely weighty strings will please fans of
Alien 3.
Explosive ensemble chanting and brass heroics will appeal to Golden Age
collectors. But there are even moments of seemingly drug-enhanced cues of
carnival-like mayhem that Danny Elfman's most deviant collectors will appreciate.
Each element is handled with talent and a smart edge for eccentricity. Those who
carefully follow Goldenthal's career praise this score highly because of that
creativity. What they miss, however, is the fact that this score failed for
mainstream audiences for the same reason the film failed in theatres. When you
have so many disparate elements, in both the story's emotions and the film's
visual presentation of those plotlines, you need something to root the film a
consistency that audiences can hold on to. Composers are often the tools with
which to accomplish this. What Goldenthal did for
Titus, however, was to
simply repeat the same disparity, and thus added even more delirious confusion to
the mix. The various genres begin and end with distinct edges (sometimes
suffering from poor editing of the music in the merging of its separate
recordings), and thus, the score cannot create a cohesive whole. Each element by
itself (the swing, the adagio, the choral, and even the absolutely, riotously
wild "Pickled Heads") has talent and merit, but together they form a badly
schizophrenic atmosphere. If you thought that
Batman Forever was aimless,
this one is another giant leap in that direction.
In the film, therefore, the score is highly successful in
extending a surreal and unpredictable soundscape. On album, however, the
presentation doesn't work unless you're looking to study it from an intellectual
viewpoint. Had Goldenthal been able to merge all these elements together into
some overarching identity during the entirety of the score, then
Titus
could have been uniformly magnificent. But the tone changes so thoroughly from
cue to cue (ranging from a collection of rather mundane, underplayed, ambient
cues to a frenetic sprinkling of different genres with sharp cuts) that not even
a better integration of the material in its album presentation could have
salvaged the listening experience. The irony involving
Titus, of course,
is in its extremely effective handling of the straight forward choral and
orchestral bombast for ancient Rome. If you completely disregard the jazz and
swing cues, then you have five or six really strong recordings of muscular,
largely harmonic material that is so powerful that is has been emulated both
seriously and in parody form. In the case of the former, Warner Brothers had to
apologize (among other actions under legal guidance) for Tyler Bates' lifting of
"Victorious Titus" and "Finale" in his 2007 score for
300. In the case
of the latter, Christopher Lennertz used the same inspiration for the wacky
Meet
the Spartans in 2008, even extending the style of vocals heard in "An
Offering." So if you do your own rearrangement of the album, taking its
functional non-traditional elements and place them together at the end, the
experience is actually quite rewarding. Even the cue pulled from Goldenthal's
A Time to Kill fits with the remaining orchestral material. Like
Interview with the Vampire, however, the score does have several
underplayed cues of mundane meandering in its mid-section that could easily be
skipped. As the album presentation stands, though, the product is a headache
waiting to happen. Such was this score's destiny, and you can be guaranteed that
the mainstream listener, along with a significant number of film score
collectors, will either be confused by or intolerant of Goldenthal's
intentionally inconsistent approach to the film. In context, there was no need
for a sound rooted in consistency, but an album experience is an entirely
different animal.
@Amazon.com: CD or
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- Music as Written for the Film: ****
- Music as Heard on Album: **
- Overall: ***
| Bias Check: |
For Elliot Goldenthal reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.13
(in 16 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.2
(in 17,800 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
