November 17, 2011

  • Review: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Iglesias)

    Alberto Iglesias might have seemed to appear from nowhere to American film music fans with his scores for The Constant Gardener or The Kite Runner—his most high profile Hollywood projects.  But, in fact, he has created a steady stream of fine scores in European cinema, most notably for Pedro Almodovar.  His recent score for that director’s The Skin I Live In is certainly one of the year’s finest.  Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the Cold War espionage thriller by John Le Carre, receives yet another of the composer’s fine underscores.  The new film features Gary Oldman as primary character George Smiley.  The feature is directed by Tomas Alfredson who remade the Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In (2008).

    From the outset of “George Smiley,” we find Iglesias in full noir mode with a jazz-tinged atmosphere and trumpet idea that moves mysteriously in and out of the harmonic palette that accompanies it.  The result is both intimate and reflective of the darker natures of this main character.  The string writing is not unlike what Iglesias has used in other dramatic writing.  The difference is in the various orchestral colors from solo instruments like clarinet in “Islay Hotel.”  Close interval clusters couple with quick crescendos work to lend some sense of forward motion (“Control”) at times even while the noir-ish solo ideas might float about in the texture in fascinating orchestral atmospheric writing.  Even when these ideas create dissonance the result feels almost accidental and the harmonies may shift into extended chord structures with always shifting results.  A touch of that Herrmann-esque color that has appeared in other of Iglesias’ dramatic Almodovar scores is on display in this one as well (especially “Eserhase”).  Iglesias winds his thematic elements through this score with sparse brushstrokes that almost have a cold Baroque-steel to them in tracks like “Tarr and Irina.”  The disc features a number of character tracks towards its conclusion that provide further insight into the larger underscored moments where these ideas come together.  As a listening experience, some may find the score a bit dry and cold at times being able to only take so much musical atmosphere. 

    The music for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is not your typical Hollywood underscore for this sort of thriller.  There are now electronic drumbeats or odd design textures (though some of this appears in “Anything else?” briefly against a piano line).  Instead Iglesias creates atmosphere orchestrally while maintaining hints at primary material just enough to give the whole score cohesion.  Silva records releases the score both digitally and as a CD release.