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FILMTRACKS.COM
PRINTER-FRIENDLY VIEW 
Review of A Wrinkle in Time (Ramin Djawadi)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you seek a highly generic fantasy environment that
does not tax your brain to any level, Ramin Djawadi supplying
satisfyingly predictable and sometimes lovely ethereal tones that remain
accessible during nearly their entire length.
Avoid it... if you demand to exercise yourself with any meaningful complexity in this genre of film music, for the constructs here are sparse, the tempos are slow, and the textures are mostly familiar.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
A Wrinkle in Time: (Ramin Djawadi) Repeating many
of the same errors of 2015's Tomorrowland, Disney clearly missed
the mark with its 2018 adaptation of Madeleine L'Engle's 1962 novel,
A Wrinkle in Time. The film marked the first feature of a $100
million budget ever helmed by a woman of color, and while its visuals
dazzled as expected, its ethereal, detached story failed to engage
audience interest. The young daughter of an astrophysicist is joined by
her friends on a galactic journey to find her father when he invents a
machine that teleports him to a distant world. Three celestial beings in
the form of wise women assist the children along their path as they seek
to defeat an evil being on another world and free the main character's
father. Unfortunately, A Wrinkle in Time didn't package this tale
in a way audiences could care about, and some viewers were even offended
by Disney's "sanitization" of the Christian elements of the book in the
studio's efforts to streamline the fantasy appeal. Regardless of the
reason for the failure, the movie was soon poised to lose hundreds of
millions of dollars, making it a notably disastrous misfire for the
studio. Although there were rumors that British rock
musician-turned-composer Jonny Greenwood was attached to A Wrinkle in
Time, the assignment ultimately went to Hans Zimmer offshoot Ramin
Djawadi, whose popular music for the television series "Game of Thrones"
had caught the ear of director Ava DuVernay. While Djawadi has, like
many graduates of Remote Control Productions, written a handful of
children's animation scores through the years, he is best known for his
edgier and bombastic flair, a sound that ironically guided very little
of A Wrinkle in Time. Instead, listeners are treated to an
extended homage to 1990's James Horner and 2000's Thomas Newman and
Mychael Danna mannerisms, yielding an amalgamation of non-offensive
fantasy tones that serves its topic with sufficient but rather
forgettable ambience and accomplishes all its tasks faithfully without
pushing any boundaries. It's a completely harmless score, a pleasant
diversion for a rainy day, but one can easily get the impression that
this music, like the film itself, could have and should have been so
much more.
The friendly demeanor of the score for A Wrinkle in Time is owed to its orchestral and choral foundation and Djawadi's aversion to complex musical structures throughout. Never does the orchestra sound challenged by the constructs of the composition, and the choir most often bubbles along with the most innocuous children's choir tones of optimism and charm. Electronic effects, whether looped or as solo accents, are tastefully applied. Specialty exotic instrumentation is included occasionally and is missed in other cues, the use of pan flutes, bowls, and groaning, Eastern-inspired, string-like tones serving to balance the writing's simplicity with interesting personality. Thematically, A Wrinkle in Time includes one primary idea and a host of secondary motifs, though many of these themes are not developed individually or intertwined as well as one might hope. The main theme is a keenly rising and falling affair, suggesting loops in time, and it sadly takes until "The Universe is Within All of Us" before it receives any impressively layered or customized treatment beyond new-agey benevolence of the most simplistic kind in "A Wrinkle in Time," "Happy Medium," and "Uriel," among others. Only in the final, victorious cue does Djawadi finally play with the progressions to supply some distinctive variation on the otherwise stale and conservative idea, though he alters one note in the interlude sequence at 0:48 in a darkening, minor-mode way that sounds almost like a performance flub. One could argue that "A Wrinkle in Time" emulates Horner's Avatar with the same lightly choral and thumping electronic love that Edmund Choi's 2000 score for The Dish emulated Apollo 13, and the latter half of "Happy Medium" will solicit the Newman and Danna comparisons. The bird-like accents to "Uriel" are a nice touch to aid the metallic percussion, though the theme is no more evolved by this point. Such is the problem with much of A Wrinkle in Time; there is little intelligent complexity in counterpoint or other substantive lines of action in the thematic statements. Slow tempos compound this problem, making the music sound shallow in its lyrical passages. The otherwise lovely emotional catharsis in the piano, string, and solo female vocal portion of "Sorry I'm Late," for instance, is sapped by a lack of convincing depth to the music. Djawadi has to stir the soul better than this. A wealth of secondary motific exploration exists in A Wrinkle in Time, but little of it congeals into meaningful associations. There is a block of motifs representing friends and family, another block for the three celestial women, and a final one for the villain of the story. The friends material is maddeningly decentered, representing family and the trials of the children outside of the scope of the main theme with solo string and/or piano renditions in "Home," "Forgive Me," and "Tesseract" meandering about. The material for the three women and their encouragement of the youths' discovery of the universe is arguably a highlight, the synthetic and organic blends in "Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which," "Touch the Stars," and "Tap Into Your Mind" sadly underplayed in the score's overarching scheme. A rising, slurred note to conclude a crescendo near the ends of "Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which," "Tap Into Your Mind," and "Sorry I'm Late" is a notable, mind-altering technique that is alluded to elsewhere as well. The villain's theme consists of three descending notes in its first phrase and the identical three notes rising to a fourth addition in the second phrase. Existing early in "Darkness Across the Universe" before transitioning into the friends and family material on piano, this identity informs the score's most abrasive action cue, "Camazotz" (Remote Control fans will appreciate the latter half of this track as a guilty pleasure moment), and is reprised in massive choral form in "Be a Warrior." Unfortunately, this theme doesn't musically battle any of the other identities, instead yielding to easily tonal expressions of fantasy in each case. Overall, Djawadi's approach towards A Wrinkle in Time is easily accessible and strains not to offend. Even the songs included on the soundtrack, including the return of British performer Sade for the original entry, "Flower of the Universe," are digestible to a fault. There is nothing really wrong with this overall musical product except for its deliberate choice to emulate soothing fantasy or conservative action tones at every instance, the composition emphasizing harmonious glory in perpetual payoff mode rather than building its narrative up to that deliverance. Had this score debuted in the 1990's, it would have existed as a comfortable, four-star companion to Horner's equivalents of the era. But this territory is too well traversed now for such simplistic appeal to function; instead, it sounds frustratingly stale and borderline disingenuous. Still, turn off your brain and appreciate this score as suitable sonic wallpaper with which to set a mindless fantasy ambience while you task yourself with other endeavors. ***
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 72:14
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert includes a list of performers but no extra information about the score or film.
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