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Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
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Conducted by:
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Dirk Brosse
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Orchestrated by:
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Robert Elhei
Elliot Goldenthal
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Co-Produced by:
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Teese Gohl
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Score Vocals by:
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Lara Fabian
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Release Date:
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July 3rd, 2001
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Availability:
Regular U.S. release.
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Filmtracks Editorial Review:
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| | Goldenthal | |
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Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within: (Elliot Goldenthal) Since Elliot
Goldenthal's emergence into film scoring in the early 1990's, the young composer
has stood on the fringe of the mainstream, shunning most major projects that
didn't involve a dark, mysterious, or terrifying plot. Goldenthal's distance
from large scale popularity was best exemplified in a large Vanity Fair
photo of the top two dozen film composers from a few years ago, for which the
composers happily conversed with each and were oblivious to the camera... except
for Elliot Goldenthal, who took the opportunity to give the cameraman the evil
eye. His scores aren't much different, often verbose in their expressions of
dramatic darkness. His experimentation with electronics is often accompanied by
gothic themes and high pitch strings that perform his solemn adagios. More than
anything else, Goldenthal is a master of creating unnerving scores. Although
such music doesn't always translate well onto album (with the exception of a
die-hard Goldenthal following which has gained stream in a small cross-section
of film music fans), his disharmonious scores for films such as Alien 3
and Sphere have proven very effective in scaring audiences.
While Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within contains its fair share of creepy
and scary moments, it is an entirely different breed of film. Hironobu
Sakaguchi's extremely popular creation of the nine Final Fantasy video
games has led to one of the greatest game cult followings ever. With a
futuristic, fantastic vision of Earth in decades to come, and the nasty alien
forces that come to get us as we evolve into energy, the games feature awe
inspiring graphics, as does the film. While technically falling under the anime
genre of films, this first Final Fantasy film exhibits the best CGI
rendering technologies to date, making its animated characters, with voices
performed by an impressive cast, look darn near real. With the tenth installment
of the game set for imminent release, don't be surprised if the film inspires
sequels of like-minded technology. But because the film is still an animated
project, Elliot Goldenthal's task with the score was made far more difficult.
Rather than allowing his work to be simply a supplementary sense in the film,
Goldenthal was presented with the challenge of portraying and extending the
emotions that the animated characters feel, since those characters (despite the
fantastic CGI rendering) still suffer from a lack of realness for many
audiences. To accomplish this emotional depth, Goldenthal was forced to create a
more lyrical and melodic score --something that might come as a shock to film
score collectors.
Goldenthal recorded Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within with the massive
London Symphony Orchestra in several of the largest and most impressive English
locales. For the larger cues, Goldenthal employed extra brass players and a wide
array of percussive experts. When combined with the full chorus, the total sum
of players and singers for this score numbered in the hundreds. This is no
run-of-the-mill Los Angeles score; the budget for Goldenthal was very generous,
and he used every last bit of it to record one of the largest scores in recent
memory. In sheer volume, Goldenthal's music abounds with a mighty touch. While
he may claim that his thematic development is more lyrical and melodic than
anything he's ever done before, the title theme and softer secondary themes are
still saturated with his gothic, melodramtic style of dark harmony. Instead of
creating straight major key motifs to signify a hero's theme or a grand vista,
Goldenthal continues to handle such cues by simply amplifying his minor key
inclinations to a level of volume that produces a similarly adequate result.
Gone from this score are the trilling of brass that Goldenthal seems to love,
and even the high pitched quivering of strings that is also his trademark is
limited to a handful of cues. The action sequences are scored with the
monumental bass power of the timpani and snare drums, highlighted by the
absolutely enormous brass sections, which you can hear in full force during the
opening cue. Only in the lengthy seventh track does Goldenthal (admittedly)
revert to his Alien 3 style of total disharmony.
The rest of the action cues will likely please those of you who enjoy his two
Batman scores. There is quite a bit of action filler material in Final
Fantasy: The Spirits Within that seems lifted from Batman Forever,
but included in this effort are some of the best motifs that the prior score had
to offer. The highlights of Final Fantasy, however, are the three tracks
during which Goldenthal accentuates the toughest emotions: love and
rememberance. He decided upon a piano to best represent these emotions, because
that instrument, more than any other, is easily identifiable to audiences. The
fifth, twelfth and sixteenth tracks are the best compositions of Goldenthal's
career, showing that he can indeed express his own intense styles with a
romantic performance of theme. The project allowed Goldenthal the rare
opportunity to expand his theme into the title song of the film, which he
adapted for French-native Canadian Lara Fabian to perform. Hearing a pop song
translated from Goldenthal's unorthodox chord progressions is a very interesting
experience, and I wonder if it will be too awkward compared to the commonly
accepted, simplistic James Horner type of song to be successful. The second song
is a harder, more irritating rock affair that may or may not interest the
Goldenthal fans. Both songs are set to appear over the end credits. The album is
an "enhanced CD" which will give you a preview of the upcoming Final Fantasy
X game in your CD-ROM. Overall, this is still a Goldenthal score, so it will
be jarring in its more active moments. But its thematic development and
emotional depth is far beyond anything heard from Goldenthal before, and it's
therefore an easily recommendable album. It will blow you out of your seat. ****
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Viewer Ratings and Comments:
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• 1. The Spirit Within (2:05)
• 2. Race to old New York (1:20)
• 3. The Phantom Plains (1:42)
• 4. Code Red (2:05)
• 5. The Kiss (4:14)
• 6. Entrada (0:54)
• 7. Toccata and Dreamscapes (8:29)
• 8. Music for Dialogues (2:18)
• 9. Winged Serpent (1:35)
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• 10. Zeus Cannon (3:24)
• 11. Flight to the Wasteland (5:56)
• 12. A Child Recalled (2:25)
• 13. The Eighth Spirit (0:50)
• 14. Dead Rain (1:50)
• 15. Blue Light (3:29)
• 16. Adagio and Transfiguration (5:23)
• 17. The Dream Within (4:43) (song performed by Lara Fabian)
• 18. Spirit Dreams Inside (3:42) (song performed by L'Arc-en-Ciel)
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Insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
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