Archive
THE LOVER [L’AMANT] – Gabriel Yared
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Lover, or L’Amant in its native language, is a French romantic drama film directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, adapted from the semi-autobiographical 1984 novel of the same name by Marguerite Duras. The film explores the illicit affair between an unnamed teenage French girl and an unnamed wealthy Chinese man in French Indochina in 1929; the teenage girl is played by actress Jane March, while her lover is played by Hong Kong cinema legend Tony Leung. The film also features the legendary Jeanne Moreau as a narrator, intended to be author Duras looking back at her own adolescence. While certainly scandalous in its sympathetic portrayal of under-age love and explicit sex – many critics drew parallels between it and the story of Lolita – the film was a domestic commercial and critical success, going on to be nominated for seven César Awards in France, as well as being nominated for an Oscar for Robert Fraisse’s lush cinematography, which portrays colonial Saigon in gorgeous, romantic hues. Read more…
JUDY – Gabriel Yared
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The life and death of Judy Garland stands as one of Hollywood’s most tragic cautionary tales. As a young actress she was catapulted to stardom in 1939 at the age of just 17 when she appeared in The Wizard of Oz, but over the next thirty years her life was a rollercoaster of cinematic and musical successes and failures, mental illness problems, drug addiction and alcoholism, failed marriages, and studio-mandated meddling which effectively destroyed her private life. Garland died of a barbiturate overdose in London in 1969, a shell of the woman she had once been. She was only 47 but her career as a Hollywood leading light had long since dimmed, and she had been reduced to playing revues at small nightclubs, partly to simply pay her bills, and partly as a way to possibly reignite her work. Director Rupert Goold’s film Judy, based on the play ‘End of the Rainbow’ by Peter Quilter, is an intimate look at those last months of Garland’s life as she reflects on her years, not knowing that she was in the latter stages of it. The film is anchored by an astonishing performance by Renee Zellweger as Garland, who somehow simultaneously captures both the glamorousness of her early life and the booze-soaked faded glory that typified her last hurrah. Read more…
THE PROMISE – Gabriel Yared
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Armenian genocide that took place between 1915 and 1917 was the systematic extermination of more than 1.5 million Armenians by the government of the Ottoman Empire in what is now Turkey. It’s one of the most overlooked examples of ethnic cleansing of the 20th century – and one which the current Turkish government still refuses to acknowledge – but it is now starting to become more widely recognized. Director Terry George’s film The Promise looks poised to be one of the first films to examine the historical importance of the period; it’s a sweeping epic set during the final years of the Ottoman Empire which focuses on the love triangle that develops between an Armenian medical student (Oscar Isaac), an acclaimed American journalist in Paris (Christian Bale), and an Armenian-born woman raised in France (Charlotte Le Bon), and which uses the backdrop of the genocide for social context. Read more…
Best Scores of 2015 – Asia
The sixth and final installment in my series of articles looking at the best “under the radar” scores from around the world concentrates on music from films from Asia, although all of main ones this year are from the far eastern nation of Japan, with a couple of interlopers from Iran and the Lebanon. In this article, I’m taking a deeper look at several truly excellent works, which range in scope from anime movies and prestigious TV series to fantasy adventures, small-scale dramas, and religious epics. Read more…
AMELIA – Gabriel Yared
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Amelia Earhart was one of the pioneers of modern aviation, a best-selling author, and a revolutionary feminist who enjoyed enormous celebrity during her life, and whose tragic death in 1937 remains shrouded in mystery. From her humble beginnings in rural Kansas in 1897, she rose to become one of the pre-eminent women of her generation; she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean in 1932, was a member of the engineering faculty at Purdue University in Indiana, and was in the middle of an attempt to circumnavigate the globe when she disappeared over the Pacific Ocean. Director Mira Nair’s film of her life – Amelia – stars Hilary Swank as Earhart and Richard Gere as her agent and husband George Putnam, features Ewan McGregor and Christopher Eccleston in supporting roles, and boasts a rich, sweeping score by French/Lebanese composer Gabriel Yared. Read more…
1408 – Gabriel Yared
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
An effective little horror movie directed by Mikael Håfström and based on a short story by Stephen King, 1408 stars John Cusack as Mike Enslin, a man who specializes in debunking paranormal phenomena and supernatural occurrences. While researching a new book, and in attempt to disprove another myth, he checks into the fabled room 1408 in the Dolphin Hotel in New York, which has a grisly and famous history. Despite the misgivings of the hotel manager (Samuel L. Jackson), Mike settles in… and soon finds that not all fables are fake.
I can’t think of the last time Gabriel Yared scored a horror movie – or even if he’s ever done one – but the results on 1408 are pretty impressive. A string orchestra augmented by synths is the order of the day Read more…
L’AVION – Gabriel Yared
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Following the controversial (and, in my opinion, wholly inexcusable) rejection of Gabriel Yared’s score for Troy last year, and his subsequent public spat with Warner Brothers, many people wondered whether he would ever work in the Hollywood mainstream again. Although the idea of him being given a complete cold-shoulder by the major studio executives is unlikely, it’s not unsurprising to learn that his first post-Troy feature assignments are all predominantly European films: the German drama Das Leben Der Anderen, English director Anthony Minghella’s Breaking and Entering, and this film: the French drama L’Avion. Read more…
TROY (REJECTED SCORE) – Gabriel Yared
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Gabriel Yared began work on Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy during the first phases of production, in early 2003. He was certainly an unexpected choice to score a film of this type, having spent much of his Hollywood career scoring sentimental romantic dramas such as The English Patient, City of Angels, Message in a Bottle, Possession and Cold Mountain, and scoring them well. Nevertheless, Yared threw himself into the project, exploring ancient and modern musical techniques, integrating Bulgarian choirs and Macedonian soloists into his work, and much more besides. For over a year, Yared immersed himself in the music of Trojans and Spartans and Greeks, having been afforded the luxury of time, something not often given to film music composers these days. The score was recorded in February 2004, and everyone, from Wolfgang Petersen to the studio execs at Warner Brothers, loved Yared’s work. Then, the film was screened for a test audience in Sacramento, California, and everything changed. The focus group at the test decided Yared’s music was “overpowering and too big, old fashioned and dated the film” and, sensing potential trouble, Warner Brothers unceremoniously threw out Yared’s work. Overnight, a year’s worth of research and planning was discarded by a group of studio executives who believed that the Sacramento focus group had better taste in film music than a director of Petersen’s caliber, and a composer of Yared’s standing. Read more…
POSSESSION – Gabriel Yared
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Occasionally, I write a highly personal soundtrack review, and I make no apologies for this review of Possession being one of them. I saw this film for the first time in November 2002, with the woman who is shortly to become my wife. It was the first movie we ever saw together, on a cold winter night in London’s Leicester Square, and for some reason both film – and music – weaved a magical spell on us. The poetic language and vivid imagery, beautiful locations and inherent passion and romance of Neil La Bute’s movie was electric, and contained a great deal of personal resonance for the two of us. As a result, Possession has become an enduring favorite of ours, with the music easily ranking as one of the best “sleeper” scores of 2002. Read more…
THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY – Gabriel Yared
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Talented Mr. Ripley is the least impressive Gabriel Yared score I have ever heard. But before you leap up and down, you should be aware that my statement is tempered by the fact that I have only heard six of his efforts to date, and that he has scored many obscure movies in his native France and across Europe, so to make such a sweeping generalization is doing his work a bit of a disservice. But, whereas his recent efforts in City of Angels and Message In A Bottle transported the listener into the realms of high romance, The Talented Mr. Ripley is less well-defined, less thematically strong, and suffers the same fate as The English Patient by completely overshadowed on album by a load of irresponsibly-programmed songs. Read more…
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