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Yes, I know: Gustavo Santaolalla for "Brokeback Mountain."
Really.
Surely the Academy was joking.
Again.
However, nothing could be any more worthy than Harry Gregson-Williams' score for "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe."
And it wasn't even nominated!
What a great score this is! It not only magnificently "underscores" and adds emotional depth to a good film, but stands by itself as sheer, splendid music. When a composer can accomplish both things at once that is just fantastic.
He followed up with "Caspian," and the two scores add profound dimension to both films. Run them together in a playlist and you have nearly two hours of some of the best film music available today.
Despite the fact that "Lion/Witch" is a fantasy film, and he is scoring an alternate universe filled with CG effects, composites and animatronics--all, I must say, woven together perfectly with live action by director Andrew Adamson--Gregson-Williams' musical world achieves the wonderfully transcendent human aspect so palpable in the four superb young actors at the film's core.
"The Blitz, 1940"--the film's very beginning--is absolutely gripping in conveying the terror of being under bombardment! Except for airplane sounds (or in this case I should say "aeroplane" sounds!), G-W makes his effects musically. Although in this track and throughout the score there is some electronic and/or non-traditional instrumentation, it is always used to outstanding dramatic effect never overriding or overshadowing, but blending completely with the "real" music.
The relentless pounding of "The Blitz" contrasts vividly with the elegiac "Evacuating London," which follows and plays over the opening credits as the children are sent to the safety of the country, away from the beleaguered city. It reappears later as the Pevensies begin their actual journey within Narnia. Listen to G-W masterfully evoke the sound of train wheels using what I suppose is computer-generated instrumentation for the effect. The end result is so unerringly musical that you think it's made by standard instruments!
Intense, varied "colors" actually draw the "White" Witch perfectly, alternating commanding, militaristic music with dark, sinister sounds and wordless chorus. On the CD, this track then transitions into the gossamer opening notes of "From Western Woods to Beaversdam" which follows.
The same powerfully suggestive music associated with the White Witch is expanded later in Aslan's sacrifice at the "Stone Table" which opens eerily with judicious use of growling, hushed choral chanting and some non-traditional or electronic instrumentation. It is often fierce, breathtaking music that builds to an almost "Walpurgisnacht" frenzy, then ebbs slowly and builds again finally receding into the aftermath of Aslan's death. It solidifies the action in the film, but is also a spectacular track just to listen to. On the CD, this track leads right into "The Battle" which means the principal forces in the film are back-to-back musically for about 15 minutes straight.
"The Stone Table" and "The Battle" stand in striking contrast to the gentle, captivating "The Wardrobe," and the wistfulness of the meeting between Lucy and Mr. Tumnus; the other-worldliness of the plaintive "Narnia Lullaby," and then the radiant splendor of the "Father Christmas" music. Gregson-Williams' impressive command of compositional style perfectly paints this wide range of emotions always allowing the music to stay "within" the film, never overwhelming it. Yet on its own the score remains musically "compleat."
The "Narnia" theme that dominates in different forms once we and the children actually enter the magic land is by turns luminous, majestic, and eloquent. It will haunt you--I have trouble getting it out of my head--even if you haven't seen the film(s) as it wends its way through several sections of the score.
Heard in the opening of "To Aslan's Camp," it is stately and sweeping. It keeps reappearing in this section and blends almost seamlessly into "Knighting Peter," where it contemplatively mirrors Peter's coming of age.
Gregson-Williams then flawlessly integrates the theme into outstanding battle music, again using the wordless chorus in great variation, and keeping Narnia in the vanguard as it soars powerfully to ultimate victory.
In the film sections of the battle aren't scored at all, but those that are contain some of the best battle sequences I've heard in a long time because they're highly individualistic and thoroughly musical, not just a lot of bombast. You never musically "lose" the principals who are contesting. The "Narnia" and "White Witch" themes are constantly intertwining, one dominating, and then the other, until Narnia finally wins the day.
"Lion/Witch" is a superb score from an exceptional composer who is capable of great music--with or without electronic enhancement!
The CD is necessarily broken into tracks, and not all the music used in the film is there. In fact, the "Lion/Witch" CD contains only about 45 minutes of the actual score out of a 142-minute film! It would be wonderful if Varese, or some other label, could give "Lion/Witch" and "Caspian" the full treatment with every cue included. Easy to say, of course, since it's not my money, I realize.
Too bad the producers couldn't simply allow G-W's lush evocations to usher us out of the film! What a waste. An extra long end-credits track would have been the perfect conclusion to the mood of the film, and then could have been added to the CD!
In his commentary Adamson actually singles out Gregson-Williams' extraordinary contribution to the emotional content of the film and yet he and his wonderful young stars seem to like the inapt contemporary sounds that jar our sensibilities as we "exit" the wardrobe into the end-credits.
Personally, I find this formula a barnacle attached to almost every film score today whatever its own merits. Stupid. They just CAN'T leave it alone!
Gregson-Williams could have developed the various themes he conjured during the film (especially some of those missing from the OST recording) SOME of which are restated in the glorious final track of the actual score, "Only the Beginning of the Adventure."
After all, that's what extended end-credits are FOR!
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