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FILMTRACKS.COM
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Review of Total Recall (Jerry Goldsmith)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you continue to admire Jerry Goldsmith's top-notch,
energetic, cohesive action and fantasy material that is saturated with
his trademark rhythmic and instrumental flair of the 1980's and
1990's.
Avoid it... if you prefer an earlier generation of Goldsmith action that didn't rely as heavily on such considerable synthetic accompaniment to the orchestra, the electronics a pivotal component of the fantasy atmosphere in this entry.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Total Recall: (Jerry Goldsmith) A blockbuster of
low moral character and extraordinary special effects, Total
Recall was a top grossing, critically embraced action film of the
highest order, with the right director, the right actor, the right
story, and the right composer happening upon each other for an
enormously entertaining result. Of director Paul Verhoeven's line of
extremely violent films of the 1990's, Total Recall, complete
with offensive use of an innocent bystander as a human shield in a gun
fight, easily maintains the most mainstream praise in retrospect, even
if it only lands on plenty of viewers' "guilty pleasure" lists.
Undemanding but enthusiastic performances by Arnold Schwarzenegger,
fresh off his spirited role in Kindergarten Cop, and Sharon Stone
countered a silly premise and dialogue so corny that it actually works
(in context, that is). The film is a classic example of a concept and
finished product that is so overwhelmingly stupid but zealously tackled
by its crew that it is undeniably likable in almost every aspect. In his
first collaboration with Verhoeven, a teaming that would eventually
include the Oscar-nominated Basic Instinct and the less inspired
Hollow Man, composer Jerry Goldsmith wrote one of the most
invigorating action scores of the Digital Age for Total Recall.
The film's futuristic, outlandish story and flashy visuals are
well-suited for Goldsmith's synthetically paced score. The composer was
well experienced in the genre by 1990, having produced popular scores
for Outland, Capricorn One, Alien, and the Star
Trek films, and for Total Recall, Goldsmith would have the
opportunity to engage his audience with his maturing use of light
electronics while also brandishing his talents with rhythmic and raw
orchestral action. It is the delicate, but well-maintained balance
between these two basic elements that makes Total Recall such an
enjoyable score, even when divorced from the stunning visuals of the
film (which won an Academy Award for its special effects without the
nuisance of any other nominated competition).
When the recording of the score was first planned, the producers wanted to save money by sending Goldsmith to Munich, where musicians could be employed at a more inexpensive rate. After several days of disappointing results from the players who were not familiar with Goldsmith's style, the money was then allotted to recall Goldsmith back to London, where he often recorded with the superior National Philharmonic Orchestra and the musicians were familiar with the kind of vigorous, sharp edge that Goldsmith preferred. There is merit to Goldsmith's claims; any collector whose has heard another ensemble attempt to re-record the title theme to Total Recall will notice a severe lack of the gritty punch that was inherent in the original performance. With a three month break in the middle of the session schedule to allow Verhoeven more time to edit the special effects, Goldsmith recorded the wacky Gremlins 2: A New Batch before returning to finish the job in the final days before the film's release. Despite the score's overwhelming presence in the film, it's not a very lengthy work in its complete form. Many of the cues written by Goldsmith were source cues, such as the "Rekall, Rekall, Rekall" jingle in the train near the start of the film and numerous other ten to twenty-second commercial jingles heard in the background of other scenes. Those source pieces heard on Mars were contributed by Bruno Louchouarn, however. Otherwise, even the ambient "elevator music" peppered throughout the various locales in the film, including the conversational, morning apartment scene near the beginning, was the work of Goldsmith. While not known by many, the composer enjoyed writing these little source cues because of the freedom and creativity they allowed him. Ultimately, while these short pieces do play a memorable role in the film (they are indeed catchy, which matches perfectly the comedic attitude of the screenplay's first half), Goldsmith enthusiasts will likely shake them off as a temporary amusement but nothing more. The relentlessly vibrant action material and soaring fantasy interludes are easily what define the mass of the work. Almost all of Goldsmith's action scores of the 1980's were highly engaging, but at the end of that era, Total Recall reaches a level of energy and cohesiveness not heard since The Wind and the Lion fifteen years prior. Instrumentally, on one side of the score for Total Recall is the relentless brass, which chops at its motifs with the same ferocity as the bullets flying around on screen. At a wickedly rapid pace (even for Goldsmith), the action cues are plentiful and expansive in length. The sheer number of chase scenes in the film required Goldsmith to produce an enormous amount of dynamic, fully orchestral material, much to the delight of his fans. On the other side of the score is the aspect which makes Total Recall a truly unique experience. Because of the futuristic setting of the film and the questions of individual identity suffered by the story's primary character, Goldsmith unleashes his electronics with unequivocal force, allowing them to not only supplement the orchestra, as they do during the chase scenes, but also commandeer entire cues with their majesty. No better of an example is "The Mutant," in which a dream-like sequence of free flowing flight reveals the massive alien secret hidden within the Red Planet. Even the mechanically precise title theme of the film is made distinct by the percussive electronics used to set its rhythms. For the more whimsical scenes, Goldsmith compliments the wide choice of synthetic mixings with a full string section of the orchestra. It has been intriguingly suggested that because of the similarities in "futuristic identity issues" between the plots of Total Recall and The Matrix, the latter film would have greatly benefited from a comparatively engaging Goldsmith score. Finally, there is extraordinary beauty to be heard in "The Mutant" and several other cues (including the redemptive finale), with several cues offering the kind of soaring Goldsmith romanticism that exists in Medicine Man and many other scores from the composer at that time. For some listeners, this fantasy element remains the score's most enjoyable aspect. On the downside, the work never received a proper end credits recording, pieces of the title and "Mutant" cues edited together for that purpose. Shortly after the film's debut, the Varèse Sarabande label released a short album of Goldsmith's most interesting music from the film. Although forty-minute albums were not uncommon for orchestral scores due to union rules, the short release for Total Recall revealed itself to be almost as controversial for film score fans as the same label-composer pairing for Air Force One a few years later. Under considerable pressure from fans for an entire decade, Varèse's Robert Townson finally produced a "deluxe edition" of the score for Total Recall in 2000, with countless newly released cues combining to make a superbly comprehensive album of Goldsmith's score. The major cues newly available on the expanded album included three memorable moments: the short, but epic scene of the spaceship traveling to Mars, the moment on the Martian train when Quaid (Schwarzenegger) first sees the mountain where the alien machine is housed, and the massacre scene of gun fighting between rebel and evil Cohaagen forces, which restates the unique synth rhythms of the title theme. Also a worthy addition is the "Johnny Cab" track, which is a decent extension of the many other chase cues in the film. With seventeen more tracks of music from Total Recall (all of which ordered as they are heard in the film), the deluxe album was packed to its limits with pure Goldsmith mastery. The packaging contains lengthy notes about the score itself, though some early copies of the product suffered from alignment problems with the printing of the insert, causing words to unintentionally run off the top and bottom of the pages at a slant. The "Hologram" track from the original album was respelled to make "Hollowgram," perhaps as a jest to the later Hollow Man collaboration. The sound quality of the expanded album was noticeably better than that of the original, though no technical information is given to explain what level of remastering was attempted. Finally, there was an extra, hidden source cue at the very end of the "New Life" track which true Goldsmith fans will get a chuckle over. In 2015, Quartet Records expanded even further on this presentation, filling one CD with essentially the same tracks as the 2000 album (but adding a re-creation of the end credits) and populating a second CD with the original 1990 album presentation, 19 minutes of source cues (both those by Goldsmith and Louchouarn), and two alternate recordings, including the intriguingly lame Munich version of "Clever Girl" that, in part, sent Goldsmith fleeing back to London. The sound quality on the 2015 product is not appreciably superior to that of the 2000 alternative despite an all-new mix. Quartet re-issued the same musical contents in 2020 for the film's 30th anniversary. For all collectors of Goldsmith's most robust action scores, the expanded albums for Total Recall will be a simple necessity in the collection, "The Mutant" remaining one of the composer's all-time best single cues.
TRACK LISTINGS:
1990 Varèse Album:
Total Time: 40:13
2000 Varèse Album: Total Time: 73:58
* previously unreleased track 2015/2020 Quartet Albums: Total Time: 144:13
* composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ** composed by Bruno Louchouarn
NOTES & QUOTES:
The original 1990 album's insert includes no extra information. The
expanded 2000 album's insert includes lengthy notes about the film and score, but
early printings of the insert contained badly misaligned text. The 2015 and 2020 Quartet
albums' notes are also in significant depth, including a cue-by-cue analysis. Contrary
to the claims of a few wildly juvenile fanboys, none of the inserts includes a photo of
the three-breasted midget with her top exposed, as featured in the film.
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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from Total Recall are Copyright © 1990, 2000, 2015, 2020, Varèse Sarabande, Varèse Sarabande, Quartet Records, Quartet Records and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 12/13/96 and last updated 4/28/21. |
