Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #1,065
Written 6/3/99, Revised 8/27/07
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Buy it... if you can shut down your brain long enough to enjoy the
shamelessly harmonic and predictably simplistic orchestral and choral
techniques of Harald Kloser's incongruous score.
Avoid it... if your guilty pleasures require more than just a few
gorgeous crescendos of choral majesty and a little 1930's big band
flair.
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| Kloser |
The Thirteenth Floor: (Harald Kloser/Thomas Wanker)
Based on Daniel Galouye's 1964 novel Simulacron-3, The Thirteenth
Floor was part of a mad rush in the late 1990's to develop films
that challenge audiences' notions of reality. The king of this movement
was obviously The Matrix, though spinoff ideas in Dark
City and eXistenZ took advantage of the hype to lesser
degrees. The Thirteenth Floor conceptually shares the most with
The Matrix, switching constantly between the real world and a
simulated one, with the real world being the one less expected. The
problem with The Thirteenth Floor is that any audience can figure
out the twist early in the film, leaving it as merely an exhibition of
different scenery designs in 1937 and 1999. A lackluster cast and crew
assembled by producer Roland Emmerich, mostly Germans, would create a
film released with both Star Wars: The Phantom Menace and The
Matrix in the theatres, dooming the project to a quick death on
video shelves. While Emmerich claimed to narrow his search for a
composer to one of five, Hollywood novice and Austrian Harald Kloser
would receive his big break. While his career would include both The
Day After Tomorrow and Alien vs. Predator in the coming
years, neither would be as strong as The Thirteenth Floor and his
career would languish back in Europe. Considering these three major
entries into mainstream scoring, the most immediately obvious aspect of
his writing is his inability to form a distinct personality or style in
his large-scale scores. This is partly due to the fact that he seems
incapable of writing a theme or motif and developing it to satisfaction
in any of these films, but Kloser's other problem exists in his faceless
and unpredictable approach to these scores. The Thirteenth Floor,
like the others, has some highlights. And, in this case, the highlights
are easily the best of anything in the three. But despite these high
points, The Thirteenth Floor is a score without an identity,
relying on the pleasure of the moment to appease listeners trying to
establish a continuity to the entire package. That continuity never
happens.
Kloser, with the assistance of co-composer,
co-conductor, and co-orchestrator Thomas Wanker, provides a score for
The Thirteenth Floor that can be split into three distinct parts,
and identifying them is easy because they appear chronologically on the
album. The first third of the score offers large-scale orchestral and
choral accompaniment that Emmerich would have received from David
Arnold. Shamelessly harmonic and simple in its progressions and
instrumentation, cues like "Downtown L.A., 1937" and "Downloading" are
often enchanting in their constructs, even when they're essentially
accomplishing nothing more than beautiful noise. The title theme is weak
--barely distinguishable, in fact-- and a lazy, descending three-note
motif is established for later reference. Technically, this music is the
stuff of amateurs, but it once again proves that any basic construct,
when aided by an ambitious and large orchestra with choir, can sound
great in amplification. The second part of the score features the
"Wilshire Grand Swing Suite," three cues of 30's big band jazz that is
ironically the most convincing part of the entire album despite having
nothing familiar with the surrounding underscore. While competent, these
three cues will likely be passed by film score collectors. The remaining
orchestral action cues rely heavily on sampled rhythms, metallic
percussion, and deep electronic bass dwelling. Its industrial sound,
mirroring some of the Media Ventures tactics of the era, does cease in
places for a resumption of the beauty from early in the score, including
a delightful solo boy's voice in "The 13th Floor." The appropriate hard
techno rhythm in "Techno Download" yields to a couple of cues containing
the kind of choral crescendos that Arnold would be proud of in the
following two cues. After a quick resumption of obnoxiously frenetic
synthetic pounding in "Showdown," a heartfelt death cue leads to one
final statement of grand harmony with chorus at the end of the film.
It's predictable music, but it's executed quite well. And because of
that decent recording, the album is easy to recommend if you find it in
a used CD bin. Don't expect the film or score to challenge you
whatsoever.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
Bias Check:
For Harald Kloser reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.56
(in 9 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 2.54
(in 3,752 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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