February 14, 2008

  • 2008 Oscar Score nominees #3: 3:10 to Yuma

    3:10 to Yuma—Marco Beltrami

    It might seem hard to believe, but occasionally a reviewer hears a film score in a film before the CD arrives.  In very few instances, apart from my personal favorite composers, have I gone off to the local CD store to look for a score after viewing a film.  But, like many of Marco Beltrami’s fans, I was hooked on the composer’s music the moment the opening titles of Mimic began.  Beltrami’s sound had such an interesting melancholic quality in that score, but his thematic ideas were always richly orchestrated and his command of his orchestral forces seemed to invite you to a richer exploration of his music.  That particular style finds its way still into many of his big Hollywood blockbuster scores, often buried under the drum machines or post-Media Ventures string sound that many composers are forced to include in their music.  But when Beltrami does this it still manages to sound like him…a unique voice is a hard thing to come by these days in Hollywood, but he is one of a handful of younger composers just coming into their own who are able to do just that. 

     

    To really appreciate Beltrami’s work on this particular score you need to go back and look at his work on 2005’s The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.  In the meager score material he wrote for that film we begin to see an exploration of the western score along the lines of Morricone.  Thematic ideas seem to be tossed aside in favor of unusual experimental instrumental combinations.  But what is different about 3:10 to Yuma is that these musical experiments, if you will, are better integrated into the overall structure of the score as a whole and there are strong thematic threads that hold this score together.  This time the sounds may seem rather unusual at first, but they are overall less jarring.  Even in Morricone’s Spaghetti Western scores, unusual sounds always made sense even if it often led to a rather difficult listen on its own.  Such is the case here where a particular timbre, a particular motivic idea, a particular rhythm, all are treated with an equal care as the score progresses.  When one of these aspects recurs it has a narrative connection that can be felt at some deeper level in this music. 

     

    Here Beltrami updates Morricone’s more visceral approach to the Western score bringing to it his own thematic sensibility.  The opening “Main Title” sets us up for two possible directions that the score can take.  The first is a rather diffuse, unharmonically centered line on dulcimer (?) followed by a quick energetic explosion from strings that sounds very much like Beltrami’s approach to last year’s Live Free or Die Hard.  But it is that first approach which he chooses to explore here.  It’s been a while since a two-note theme carries such potential and forward momentum.  When it finally appears filled out on electric distortion guitar it is cast against western rhythmic ideas themselves orchestrated with strings and a bizarre blend of strummed instruments.  It is the kind o sound not heard in some time in the American Western film.  The long melancholic lines that Beltrami prefers appear as well in “Ben Takes the Stage/Dan’s Burden” as well.  That first thematic idea soon turns into that which reflects an inner emotional character conflict and we sense that there is something more to what we are seeing or experiencing.

     

    Unlike the guitar noodlings from Brokeback Mountain (Santaolalla’s Oscar-winning score), this score demonstrates a master composer exploring what can be done with a varied ensemble.  The strange lower harp sound is balanced against a timpani and a variety of unusual sounds of strings plucked and struck creating a relentless rhythm of its own.  In fact, the play between rhythmic energy that pulses forward is often laid in fascinating contrast to a rhythmic syncopation that spins often wildly out of control with some of the composer’s densest string writing to date (a hallmark of his many forays into Horror genre writing).  It is also fascinating to hear that small motivic idea gradually assert itself as a theme while moving through some truly fascinating orchestral textures and accompaniments until it appears majestically on trumpet in “Bible Study” (essentially what is used during the credit roll).  Specific musical gestures begin to recur in a way like Beltrami’s thematic idea as well often working as a thematic concept would.  This is perhaps one of the score’s strong points which also sits well alongside some of Morricone’s work from the 1960s.

     

    The score works fairly well.  While the quick cutting often seems to work contrary to classic Westerns, and the Leone approach, Beltrami’s score sometimes help anchor a scene that feels visually out of control.  It is one of the many ways in which Beltrami’s score, even as it appears here in the film, makes it better than it might otherwise have been. 

     

    Five Reasons Why this Should Receive the Oscar

    1.      This is an amazing display of orchestral color unlike anything we have heard lately in American cinema.

    2.      The score demonstrates a true hybridization of previous Western score styles (especially that of the 1960s Italian influence) while finding ways to incorporate contemporary scoring approaches.

    3.      Compositional development of small motif into amazing thematic statement that coalesces around the narrative flow of the film.

    4.      An ability to craft particular sounds to match dramatic sequences where the sound of the music both recalls and enhances the sequences.

    5.      Demonstrating a fascinating blend of color and thematic development that matches the story arc through the slow revealing of Beltrami’s primary theme.