Archive
THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON – Alexandre Desplat
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A film by David Fincher based on the 1922 short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is the tale of a man who is born old, and gets younger as his life progresses. Set in Louisiana in the late 1800s, it stars Brad Pitt as the titular Button, who is born with the physical appearance of an 80 year old man, much to the shock and embarrassment of his parents. As the years pass, Button gets younger and younger, fighting in wars, attending college, and falling in love – but backwards, and with the knowledge that, the longer time passes, the closer he is to losing everything and everyone around him. The film also stars Cate Blanchett, Julia Ormond, Jason Flemyng, Elias Koteas and Tilda Swinton, and is tipped to be a major player at the 2009 Academy Awards. Read more…
LARGO WINCH – Alexandre Desplat
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Largo Winch is a French action/thriller directed by Jérôme Salle, based on the popular Belgian comic book character created by Philippe Francq and Jean Van Hamme. It stars Tomer Sisley as the eponymous character, the estranged son of Nerio Winch, the incredibly wealthy international corporation, who is plucked from an Amazonian prison where he had been falsely accused of drug trafficking after Nerio is murdered. With the vast resources of his father’s company now at his disposal, Largo suddenly finds himself facing danger at every turn, as he tries to unravel the mysteries of his father’s death and his own imprisonment, and unmask those who want to take it the company, by any means possible. Read more…
THE GOLDEN COMPASS – Alexandre Desplat
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
One of the most successful, popular and well-respected children’s fantasy books in history, Philip Pullman’s trilogy His Dark Materials is a breathtaking, intelligent examination of religion, science and philosophy presented as a fantasy adventure tale, which features a young girl as its protagonist. New Line Cinema’s big-screen version of the first novel, The Golden Compass, is an ambitious attempt to condense Pullman’s expansive vision into box-office gold, and if all goes well will be the first installment of a three-film series. Newcomer Dakota Blue Richards stars as Lyra Belacqua, a young girl in an alternate-reality England, whose best friend Roger is kidnapped by The Magisterium, a mysterious organization allied to the Church, led by the icily evil Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman). Teaming up with a group of ragtag stragglers known as the Gyptians, and Iorek Byrnison (Ian McKellen), the deposed king of the Panserbjørne (a race of intelligent armored polar bears), Lyra journeys to the frozen north of the Arctic to save her friend – but encounters a greater adventure than she could have ever imagined. The film has a stellar cast, including Daniel Craig as Lyra’s adventurer uncle Lord Asriel, Jim Carter and Tom Courtney as the leaders of the Gyptians, Eva Green as the witch queen Serafina Pekkala, and Sam Elliott as the heroic hot air balloon pilot Lee Scoresby, as well as Ian McShane, Kathy Bates, Kristin Scott-Thomas, Christopher Lee and Derek Jacobi in smaller roles. Read more…
MR. MAGORIUM’S WONDER EMPORIUM – Alexandre Desplat and Aaron Zigman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
One of the most gratifying things in any industry is to have the respect of your peers; for Aaron Zigman, working on Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium must be one of the most gratifying projects of his career to date. French composer Alexandre Desplat was the composer first hired to work on this film (he was brought in very early in the project to compose some brief thematic material to be performed on-screen). However, when his scoring duties on Lust Caution and The Golden Compass clashed with post-production on this film, Desplat found himself unable to finish the task – so he specifically requested that Aaron Zigman be brought in to work with his themes, and flesh them out into a final score. The finished product is truly magical – a perfect amalgam of the two composer’s styles, which stands as one of the most enjoyable and excellent fantasy scores of 2007. Read more…
L’ENNEMI INTIME – Alexandre Desplat
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
One of the most admirable things about Alexandre Desplat is the fact that, despite his new status as one of Hollywood’s golden composers, he still regularly works on French domestic pictures back home. One of these is L’Ennemi Intime, a bold and controversial political drama/war movie directed by regular Desplat collaborator Florent Emilio Siri. The film, which has been a convention-challenging commercial success in France, stars Benoît Magimel, Albert Dupontel and Aurélien Recoing, and follows the fortunes of a platoon of French soldiers on maneuvers in North Africa during the Algerian war of independence in the late 1950s, and is one of the few French films to examine the war in Algeria with a dispassionate realism and with no ulterior agenda. Read more…
LUST CAUTION – Alexandre Desplat
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
There’s been quite a bit of controversy surrounding Lust Caution, the latest film from director Ang Lee. The winner of the prestigious Golden Lion at the 2007 Berlin Film Festival, the film tells the story of the dangerous, passionate relationship between a young woman named Wang Jiazhi (played by Wei Tang), and a shadowy political named Mr. Yee (Tony Leung), who may or may not be involved in espionage for the Chinese government in 1940s Shanghai. The controversy of the film lies not in its politics, but in its raw and realistic depiction of the sexual relationship between Wang and Yee – the MPAA slapped an NC-17 rating on the film following rumors that their lovemaking scenes were NOT simulated. Never afraid to shy away from difficult subject matters – as Brokeback Mountain attested – Ang Lee seems to be molding himself into a modern day version of Nagisa Oshima, whose equally controversial film In the Realm of the Senses polarized cinema-goers in 1976. Read more…
THE PAINTED VEIL – Alexandre Desplat
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The winner of the Golden Globe for Best Score of 2006, The Painted Veil caps off a truly remarkable year for 45 year old French composer Alexandre Desplat. His other two major 2006 scores – Firewall and The Queen – were both met with general critical acclaim, and further cemented his position as one of the most exciting composers to emerge in Hollywood in recent years. It’s easy to forget that just three years ago he was a virtual unknown outside of his native country, and that his international stature has been built up over the course of just four or five scores. Read more…
THE QUEEN – Alexandre Desplat
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in a car crash in Paris on 31 August 1997, was something of a turning point in the modern history of the United Kingdom. Up until that time, the British royal family were generally looked upon with fondness. Sure, they had their moments of scandal, Prince Phillip continually said stupid things to people on foreign tours, and there was a section of society which called for them to be abolished and the country turned into a republic. But, beyond this, the House of Windsor was seen as a mighty figurehead, as people who represented the best interests of Britain at home and abroad, as a family to be looked up to and admired. However, the reaction of the Royal Family to the death of Diana caused unprecedented resentment and outcry. The Royal Family’s rigid adherence to protocol was interpreted by the public as a lack of compassion, and all of a sudden the tide turned against them. Now, the Royal Family was cold and insular, out of touch with the thoughts and feelings of the nation they ruled, and totally irrelevant to modern British life. Queen Elizabeth II in particular came in for special criticism, initially for her refusal to allow the Royal Standard on top of Buckingham Palace to fly at half mast, and later for her seemingly forced and insincere broadcast to the nation several days later. Read more…
FIREWALL – Alexandre Desplat
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s funny how, all of a sudden, a composer comes out of nowhere and becomes one of your favourites. French composer Alexandre Desplat first appeared on the international scene in 2000 with his elegant score for the chess-themed romantic drama The Luzhin Defence; since then, through scores such as Girl With a Pearl Earring, Birth, Hostage, The Upside of Anger and Syriana, he has risen to become arguably the most exciting Gallic composer since Georges Delerue, with the capacity to write both thrilling action music and sensitive orchestral material with equal skill. Two Golden Globe nominations and a recent César Award for ‘The Beat That My Heart Skipped’ would seem to reinforce his place in the bigger scheme of things. His score for Firewall will hopefully be just as well received, and cement his position as one of Hollywood’s brightest stars. Read more…
HOSTAGE – Alexandre Desplat
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
March 11th 2005 was unofficially “Alexandre Desplat Day” in US cinemas, when his first two major Hollywood studio films – Hostage and The Upside of Anger – opened in theatres across the country. The 44-year-old Parisian has crept up on the world of film music; having worked solidly in Europe since the early 1990s, people first sat up and took notice following his Golden Globe nomination for Girl With a Pearl Earring in 2003, a success which he capitalized on with the controversial but critically acclaimed Birth in 2004. With the exception of Gabriel Yared, there hasn’t been a French composer in the Hollywood mainstream since Maurice Jarre retired, and before that since the death of Georges Delerue. Desplat more than has the talent to fill their considerable shoes. And, with Hostage, he also shows a great deal of range. Read more…
BIRTH – Alexandre Desplat
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
French composer Alexandre Desplat saw his stock rise considerably in 2003 following the international acclaim and multiple award nominations he received for Girl with a Pearl Earring. On the back of that success, Desplat was signed to score three fairly major movies in 2004: Hostage, The Upside of Anger, and Birth. A controversial and challenging drama, Birth is director Jonathan Glazer’s follow-up to the critically acclaimed Sexy Beast, and stars Nicole Kidman as Anna, a young woman whose husband Sean dies unexpectedly while out jogging in Central Park. Ten years later, having finally come to terms with her loss and become engaged to the kind and successful Joseph (Danny Huston), Anna’s life is thrown into turmoil once more when a 10-year old boy (Cameron Bright) appears, claiming to be the reincarnation of her dead husband. Read more…
GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING – Alexandre Desplat
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Johannes Vermeer was a Dutch baroque painter who lived in the city of Delft from 1632-1675, and left behind him a legacy of art that can equal that of other Dutch masters such as Van Gogh and Rembrandt. One of his most famous works is entitled “Girl with a Pearl Earring”, painted around 1665, and currently on display in the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague. Although much of Vermeer’s life is undocumented, Tracey Chevalier’s celebrated novel romanticized the creation of this famous piece of art – and is now the inspiration for the directorial debut of Peter Webber. Colin Firth stars as Vermeer, a talented yet tortured painter, trapped in a loveless marriage to the whiny, perpetually pregnant Catharina (Essie Davis), domineered by his mother in-law (Judy Parfitt), and harassed by his lecherous patron and chief source of funding, Van Ruijven (Tom Wilkinson). However, into Vermeer’s household comes a young peasant girl named Griet (Scarlett Johansson), who after a while becomes more interested in Vermeer’s work, and in Vermeer himself. Gradually, the two become attracted to each other, and Griet begins to “sit” for Vermeer (resulting in the famous painting) – much to the disgust of his wife, and Griet’s potential suitor Pieter (Cillian Murphy). Read more…
THE LUZHIN DEFENCE – Alexandre Desplat
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
What’s the sound of a French composer falling off a tall building? Desplat. I’m opening this review with a joke because I’ll wager that most of you have never heard of Alexandre Desplat, the French-born composer of The Luzhin Defence. Before I saw this film and heard this album, I knew his name, and could I list a few of his previous films (Innocent Lies, A Self Made Hero, Love Etc.), but nothing beyond that. Even now, biographical details about Desplat’s life are sketchy – I don’t even know how old he is – but I do know this: he is a composer of considerable talent. Read more…
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