 |
| Balfe |
Black Widow: (Lorne Balfe) Never mind that the
titular character perished in a fall during a previous movie in this
franchise, for the Marvel Cinematic Universe exists to insert solo
character movies wherever convenient in their larger narrative. The
Black Widow character proved more popular with audiences than Disney and
Marvel had anticipated, leading to more appearances for actress Scarlett
Johansson in these films than planned and culminating in 2021's solo
debut,
Black Widow. Targeted for a summer 2020 release, the film
was delayed more than a year to wait out the pandemic and take its
chances in theatres. Disney ultimately streamed the film simultaneously,
however, prompting Johansson to sue the studio for using a release
tactic that harmed her profits from the venture. Rather than vanquishing
enemies with lawyers in the story of
Black Widow, she instead
prevails using her fists and feet, revealing for audiences her origins
story and establishing the character's sister for inclusion in
additional Marvel adaptations in the future. Oddly like
The
Incredibles, she's part of a super-hero family of lore in Soviet
Russia and beyond, and her mission is to free her loved ones while
taking down the program that steals girls to develop them into Black
Widow female assassins. Not surprisingly, the film was an immense
popular success despite consisting of a series of rather stock action
sequences. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has enjoyed increasingly
consistent development of musical themes in its soundtracks, most of
that positive outcome owing to Alan Silvestri's work on the ensemble
cast films. The spin-off movies have often allowed a variety of other
composers to dabble in this pool of opportunity, and director Cate
Shortland landed veteran Remote Control Productions graduate Lorne Balfe
for his first Marvel venture, though purists are quick to point out that
the composer had contributed additional music to the wretched, Hans
Zimmer-produced
Iron Man score of 2008 that had primary credit go
to Ramin Djawadi. Balfe's career had ascended in the late 2010's to the
extent that his work is more symphonically and melodically satisfying
than his earlier jam sessions with Zimmer's gang. There is an increasing
amount of intelligence in his music around the start of the 2020's,
Black Widow one such notable improvement.
Early reports from 2020 indicated that Balfe had little
time to write
Black Widow, as he had been a relatively late
replacement for Alexandre Desplat. Film score enthusiasts were largely
disappointed by this switch, for it was the second time in recent years
(after
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) that Desplat had departed a
major pop-culture franchise late in the production process. Desplat
refused to reveal publicly why he left the project, and Balfe meanwhile
claimed to have ample time to write for the score despite a condensed
schedule that saw his music recorded as the final sessions in London
before the pandemic lockdown prevented full ensembles in the room at
once. The delay of the movie ultimately allowed extensive tinkering with
those recordings for much of a year, though the work remains largely
organic. He managed to record with a 118-member orchestra and 60-voice
choir slanted towards male tones, adding electronic embellishments and
the typical Remote Control sound of electric strings. The trailer for
the movie had utilized a Russian-styled adaptation of Silvestri's
franchise theme to popular effect, and Balfe opted to continue this
technique despite intentionally avoiding stereotypical Russian
instruments like the balalaika. Instead, the composer adopted vintage
Zimmer methods for generating Russian tones, making
Black Widow
something of a love letter at times to Zimmer's Media Ventures era of
masculine Eastern European muscle, highlighted by
The Peacemaker.
The male choir is key to resurrecting this sound, though Balfe also
confessed to striving for basing the melodic elements off of Russian
folk music from circa 1910, studying the works of Prokoviev and
Stravinsky for this assignment despite no formal classical training.
Though Balfe does access chord progressions associated with Russian
music generally, he doesn't necessarily succeed to the extent that James
Horner did at the task, but the result is still reasonably effective.
Most of the score for
Black Widow in the film doesn't really
espouse a Russian influence, and with Balfe replacing the use of a
balalaika with an acoustic guitar, there's almost a Latin flavor to some
passages. Perhaps most importantly, the score comes across as
independent of the Silvestri mannerisms and character for the remainder
of the franchise, though Balfe was acutely aware of the concept's
existing music when devising his own themes.
Listeners expecting to hear preexisting franchise themes
in
Black Widow will be pleased with Balfe's care here; he has
proven himself conscientious in applying concept themes in other
franchise assignments, and that consideration persists here. While his
tone is certainly much different from Silvestri's, he supplies a hint of
the main Avengers theme early in the action of "The Descent" before a
full payoff as Natasha Romanoff takes off in a jet to rescue the group
at the end of the film. More intriguingly, he was cognizant of the prior
Black Widow motif that had featured in several prior films, especially
Avengers: Endgame. This idea (a four-note phrase followed by a
three-note resolution) was applied by Balfe a few times in
Black
Widow, but not with particular prominence compared to his new ideas.
In fact, don't expect to find this material featured on the album
release for the score, a point of contention about the music more
generally. Balfe operates much like Zimmer in that he writes concept
suites that may or may not make the film in some edit. Typically, what
you hear on screen is one of many variants on these initial ideas, and
with the concept suites often comprising the bulk of the soundtrack
albums, fans will have difficulty matching what they hear on album with
what accompanies the film. This issue is especially pronounced with
Balfe's duo of
The Tomorrow War and
Black Widow, the
latter album containing extensive music not heard in a similar form in
the movie while important cues and mixes from the film are absent from
the album. As such, this review will touch mostly upon what Balfe chose
to include on the album, but be aware that about half the music on that
product (and many of its best highlights) are not utilized in the
picture. Most prominent among these are the various vocalized renditions
of folk-inspired themes for the Romanoff character. For both these
passages and those better matched with the Red Army, Balfe generated
Russian lyrics inspired by 19th Century Russian poets. The resulting
solo female vocals on the album are as intimate as they are orphaned
from the film, supplying interest if not slight bafflement as to their
quantity. Balfe's thematic development in
Black Widow is
ambitious but, in true Balfe form, not always transparent. His ideas
tend to be strong but poorly enunciated over the course of a full score,
Black Widow no exception.
A trio of surprisingly pretty, Russian-inspired themes
represent the family at the heart of
Black Widow, with offshoots
sometimes exploring variants that don't realize any satisfying end.
Romanoff herself receives a folk tune that inspires most of the melodic
variants of an intimate nature. Her sister, Yelena Belova, receives
another idea saturated with stereotypical Russian chord progressions,
and the two together receive a less regionally or time-specific idea to
represent their bittersweet relationship. On top of this core for the
protagonists, the film receives something of a generic three-note action
motif representing the sisters' action exploits, and the duo of
villains, Dreykov and his daughter, a.k.a. Taskmaster, also feature
separate and related themes. The main Romanoff/Black Widow theme is
summarized in all of "Natasha's Lullaby," where acoustic guitar and
choir join a prominent female vocalist for a performance not heard on
screen. It strains at the end of "Last Glimmer" and is hinted throughout
"You Don't Know Me" before another suite-like arrangement in "Natasha's
Fragments" gives the idea its occasional Latin feel. The theme's rising
chords structures inform the end of "I Can't Save Us" and string
counterpoint to the villain theme returns at the end of "Red Rising."
Faint chords at the start of "The Betrayed" build to a fuller choral
outburst later in the cue. The idea transitions to action mode in "The
Descent," fighting the Taskmaster motif by its climax. Offered in part
during the end credits is "Natasha Soars," the Black Widow theme in full
anthemic brass mode over hyperactive strings and woodwinds with the same
bright enthusiasm as Zimmer's
Wonder Woman 1984. The album
diminishes the theme after that, its chords meandering through the start
and end of "Into the Past" and strained string fragments over piano
presenting echoes of the idea in "Broken Free," only the theme's
rhythmic phrasing surviving the cue. A vocalized variant of the original
lullaby occupies "Last Love," its more lyrical secondary phrases a nice
touch. Similar treatment extends to "A Calling," albeit in an extremely
sparse and potentially abrasive rendering. This theme, on the whole, is
largely underplayed by Balfe, who opts not to express all-out statements
for the full ensemble outside of a few scenes. He may make the argument
that this hesitant thematic reveal is befitting for an origins film, but
it also causes continuity issues with the narrative arc of the
score.
The most alluring moments of
Black Widow's score
come in the themes for Yelena Belova and the sisters together. Belova's
theme is summarized during all of "Yelena Belova" and struggles to
assert itself elsewhere. It's vague at 1:47 into "The Pursuit" and is
bogged down against the film's main action motif at 0:39 into "The First
Bite is the Deepest." It is conveyed with slight agony at the start of
"The Betrayed" and finally breaks through at 0:42 into "A Sister Says
Goodbye," where it is featured on softer piano and choir, building to a
long crescendo before fading into a music box-like piano effect to close
out the cue. The most beautiful idea in
Black Widow represents
the sisters' relationship, mimicking the best dramatic material Balfe
has conveyed. The domain of the piano, this idea debuts at 1:47 into
"Fireflies" and stews in the middle of "Last Glimmer," but it really
shines in the piano and supporting performances in "Blood Ties" and at
0:25 into "Faces to the Sun," where its choral and piano tones offer the
score's upmost redemption. Balfe would have been best served dropping
the Belova theme and instead concentrate on just the one family theme;
while it doesn't espouse the same Russian tilt, the theme is the score's
most appealing melody. On the darker side of the score, Balfe treats the
sisters' action exploits with a surprisingly simplistic and brutal
three-note phrase hovering around key, introduced at 0:45 and 1:30 into
the suite-like "Latrodectus." It continues throughout "The First Bite is
the Deepest," its biggest performance at 1:58. The idea fights against a
variety of fluttering action lines at 0:41 into "Whirlwind" and is a
staple of "Red Rising." The motif stomps through the middle of "The
Descent" and exits the album at 2:33 into "Into the Past" over hefty
synthetic percussion. As tool of action, the motif is effective but
rather dumb; Balfe could have just as easily applied the preexisting
theme for the character in the same role and not lost much of the same
malleability. Of all the themes in
Black Widow, none is exercised
through as many variations as that of the villain, Dreykov. His identity
is conveniently summarized throughout the suite, "Dreykov," and is
provided the obligatory solo electric cello in the middle of "From the
Shadows." The theme is whipped into action in the latter half of
"Whirlwind" and shifts to big, choral menace at 0:59 into "Arise." It's
ominous early in "I Can't Save Us," pounds away with brass layers late
in "Red Rising," and slips past the main lullaby theme in "Into the
Past." It's not flashy, but it works.
Connected to Dreykov's theme in
Black Widow is
the score's final identity, one for Taskmaster. Though understandably a
simplistic variant of Dreykov's theme by design, the chopping rhythmic
formations of this motif do yield a distinct theme at 0:54 into "From
the Shadows" for the character. The idea returns in the middle of "The
Betrayed" and is immersed in action at 1:24 into "The Descent." Despite
all these themes, Balfe struggles to arrange them into a satisfying
narrative. A cue like "Hand in Hand" does not use its placement early in
the film to extend any of the score's themes effectively, hints of each
of the sisters' themes gurgling in the background without much purpose.
Some viewers may find the sisters' theme, as brief as it may be in the
score as a whole, to be the primary melody of
Black Widow, with
the idea elegantly opening and closing the film in "Fireflies" and
"Faces to the Sun." Most listeners will likely forgive the narrative's
shortcomings by latching onto specific, highly impressive cues that
expose some of the best writing of Balfe's career. The duo of
"Whirlwind" and "Natasha Soars" offer spectacular lines of action in
their recordings, the latter cue suffering from a really irritating
electronic conclusion but remaining a major attraction overall. Some
will gravitate towards the dynamic solo vocals and choral ensembles, the
latter ranging from Media Ventures appreciation to extremely abrasive
female chanting at the end of "Arise." For those wanting the most
obvious tribute to the Zimmer Media Ventures era of action, look no
further than the relentlessly chopping "The First Bite is the Deepest."
Ultimately, however,
Black Widow suffers even more than
The
Tomorrow War from a substandard arrangement of its album contents.
Upwards of half of the music included on the album was not utilized in
the film in even a similar mix or at all. (Sadly, much of the score's
least tolerable action material did actually make the film.) Someone
seeking to reconstruct the film's memorable end credits sequence must
combine parts of "Natasha Soars," "Blood Ties," "From the Shadows," and
"Yelena Belova." As mentioned before, some important cues are missing
from the album, including the rendition of Balfe's main Black Widow
theme leading up to his usage of Silvestri's overarching Avengers theme.
The score's narrative on screen is hindered by songs in a few places as
well, a Nirvana cover during the opening credits a missed opportunity.
In the end, this ambitious and often enjoyable score is potentially
defeated by its inability to allow its themes to soar, leaving you with
a series of conceptual highlights on a frustratingly arranged album.
@Amazon.com: CD or
Download
- Music as Written for the Film: ****
- Music as Heard on Album: ***
- Overall: ****
| Bias Check: |
For Lorne Balfe reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.83
(in 30 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 2.86
(in 23,478 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
There exists no official packaging for this album.
