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FILMTRACKS.COM
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Review of Alive (James Newton Howard)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you appreciate James Newton Howard's melodies at their
most redemptive and graceful heights, Alive containing a handful
of outstanding symphonic moments of salvation.
Avoid it... if you expect the bulk of the score to consistently develop the themes from those highlights, most of the work somber and understated in its plentiful woodwind solos and light ethnic tones.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Alive: (James Newton Howard) Few movies can stake a
claim to featuring gruesome cannibalism and also a sappy Hollywood
ending, but 1993's Alive attempted just that. The movie's
depiction of an Uruguayan rugby team's crash in Andes in 1972 isn't
exactly a pleasant viewing experience, though studios were lining up to
tell the true story. The plane went down with 45 people aboard, and
while the snowy crash initially killed only ten people, failed rescue
attempts caused the survivors to remain atop the mountain for more than
two months. After exhausting their food supplies, they famously began
eating their dead to survive. Eventually, two of the players descended
the mountain and alerted authorities, who then rescued the 14 remaining
people at the crash site. The battles with the elements and an avalanche
promised good cinema, but critics couldn't get past the cannibalism
aspect. Audiences still made the movie a box office success, and the
tale has lived on as a legend. With filming taking place in such an
immense and gorgeous wintry setting, the music for the film was tasked
with matching in scope. Intriguingly, director Frank Marshall decided
against applying music to the crash and avalanche sequences, allowing
sound effects to carry those scenes. For the character interactions,
scenery shots, and ultimately sugary ending, Marshall turned to composer
James Newton Howard for his music. While film music collectors later
enjoyed an illustrious career from Howard in the adventure genre, he
wasn't a proven commodity with such music at the time. The composer
sought to develop a largely melodic but not necessarily thematically
tight score, striving to match the appeal of Jerry Goldsmith in the
larger symphonic sections. Mostly leaving synthetics aside, the
orchestral score is laced with pan pipes, shakuhachi flute, and, most
importantly, acoustic guitar to provide the ethnic flavor of the region.
Of significance are a plethora of woodwind solos for the softer
passages; in fact, woodwinds truly dominate the character of the score
when the guitar is not present. Outside of these colors, the orchestra
provides a standard dramatic score with a handful of momentous ensemble
highlights.
While the score for Alive is mostly remembered for its closing fifteen minutes of immensely powerful performances, most of Howard's work is introspective. With the scariest portions of the film unscored, the composer is left with light suspense and drama duties until the landscape permits him to explore major tonality with the ensemble. Each part of the score is adept at capturing the spirit of the moment, but Howard also inexplicably avoids consistent development of his themes. Despite writing four rather significant motifs for Alive, he allows them to bleed together and dissolve into shared progressions without much purpose, causing the narrative to rely upon the spirit of the performances rather than their structures. His main theme for the movie is a definite winner, but it struggles to enunciate itself until the score's final moments. Debuting on acoustic guitar in the middle of "Nando and Carlitos," this elegantly swaying identity peeks through late in Burning Money/Lilliana" and returns to soft acoustic guitar to open "Alberto." As the survivors venture out, so too does the theme, emerging late in "Finding the Tail" and offering fragments near the end of "Final Climb Pt. 1 & Pt. 2." Only at 0:38 and later into "Saved" does Howard truly develop the theme into a powerhouse, and its performances starting at 1:05 into "End Credits (Closing Theme)" are equally fantastic. Some of the most satisfying treatment of the theme came in Howard's trailer music for Alive, heard at 1:21 into "Trailer (Version No. 1)" and "Trailer (Version No. 2)" in redemptive spirit with a vague choral layer, the latter mix adding a nice trumpet performance of the idea to close out the cue. Also figuring into both versions of the trailer music, at 1:08, is Howard's disaster theme, its massive brass and percussion rendition in that preview better than any of its performances in the score proper. There, it shines at 0:26 into "The First Night" on the full ensemble, becoming tense on strings later in the cue. It's twisted into a dramatic variant at outset of "Eating" and is revisited in the first half of "Second Climb," on solo horn in the middle of "Post Avalanche," and only in shades during "Digging Out." This theme's potential is largely sapped by the lack of accompanying action statements for the actual crash and avalanche scenes. Howard's other themes for Alive tend to morph into each other the most, ultimately causing their shared harmonies and generally accessible tonality to carry them. A lament theme is introduced on piano at 3:36 into "The First Night" and is nicely conveyed by solo horn in the middle of the original version of "Nando and Carlitos." Several troubled statements of the lament theme exist in "Eating," consolidating at 3:32. It opens "Finding the Tail" delicately but builds to a massive ensemble statement with gong hits, that impressive moment reprised at 0:24 into "Nando Carries Roy" with similar melodrama. The idea loses steam thereafter, though, heard at 1:05 into "Final Climb Pt. 1 & Pt. 2" on guitar but going missing thereafter. Meanwhile, a related theme for the concept of home contains mannerisms that will remind collectors of James Horner whimsy, identifiable at 1:03 into "Home" on exotic flute. This theme struggles in "Frozen Climbers," takes more linear shape in the middle of "Burning Money/Lilliana," and is hinted early in "It's God," after which the theme develops into new, hopeful melody for a victorious major key. The home theme interjects at 1:26 into "Final Climb Pt. 1" on strings, its evolved version informing the first minute of "End Credits (Closing Theme)" with particularly Horner-like zeal. Other motifs do float about the score, but many are too sparse to really appreciate. The most interesting of them is a theme for the doomed Susana character, who receives an ethereal, rhythmic motif for guitar and synths that is heard three times, late in "Nando Awakes," at the end of "Rosary Montage," and in allusion in "Susana's Coat." The 1993 Hollywood Records album for Alive condensed the score to 31 minutes but missed several of the score's highlights of greater volume while featuring several largely uninteresting conversational cues. That product always remained at a bargain basement price through the years, and it serves no purpose whatsoever since a limited 2020 2-CD set was provided Alive by Intrada Records. That expansion includes the vital "Sledding," "Post Avalanche," and "Saved," along with the exciting trailer music and a variety of alternate takes on major cues. The lack of "Saved" on the 1993 product remains a completely unforgivable omission. The score is certainly not among Howard's best, but it contains ten to fifteen minutes of really outstanding melodic material, and those highlights alone carry a recommendation of the whole. ****
TRACK LISTINGS:
1993 Hollywood Album:
Total Time: 29:57
2022 Intrada Album: Total Time: 142:04
* Not used in the film
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert of the 1993 Hollywood album includes no extra information about
the score or film. That of the 2020 Intrada product contains details about both.
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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from Alive are Copyright © 1993, 2020, Hollywood Records, Intrada Records and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 3/17/22 (and not updated significantly since). |
