Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #987
Written 12/28/13
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Buy it... if you long for the subtle, sentimental complexities of
yesteryear in your film scores, John Williams' continued mastery of
understatement from a child's perspective an art form extremely rare in
today's film industry.
Avoid it... if Williams' quiet dramatic ambience, allowed only a
handful of cues with full ensemble depth, cannot sustain your interest
even if you respect his methods and continued production.
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| Williams |
The Book Thief: (John Williams) As one should
expect, there is heartbreak and contemplation at the core of Markus
Zusak's novel, "The Book Thief," and that solemn character carries over
to the 2013 cinematic adaptation of the same name. Set in Germany in the
years leading up to and including World War II, The Book Thief is
the tale of a young girl's perseverance as she joins a pair of foster
parents who, in secrecy, reject the rise of the Nazis by promoting
literacy and housing a Jewish boy in their basement to protect him. The
girl becomes a reading fanatic and draws attention for her theft of a
book from a bonfire, as well as her compassion for everyone she meets.
Narrated by the Angel of Death, the story has bittersweet redemption at
it conclusion, but not before the loss of life is extensive. The
arthouse film was met with only muted praise from critics but enjoyed a
surprisingly robust reaction from audiences and awarding groups, its
cause buoyed in part by its tender, evocative score by maestro John
Williams. The composer had only worked with Steven Spielberg or George
Lucas since 2004, and his involvement in Brian Percival's The Book
Thief is owed to Williams' love of the book; upon learning of its
start of production for the screen, he actively sought the assignment.
The 81-year-old has, over the previous three years, shown no
deterioration of his skills. Despite writing music with pencil and paper
at his piano as he has always done, Williams continues to demonstrate
the ability to capture the essence of a story through lyrical means,
even if the tone of his music is understated. There are intricacies to
Williams' techniques that continue to elude the younger generation of
composers, an ability take a single extended whole note for strings and
use its slowly building and diminishing pulsations to convey a range of
emotions within that note. Few composers have the knack to express so
much with a restrained orchestral ensemble, but Williams has been doing
it for most of his career, and do not be surprised if The Book
Thief transports you back to the composer's era of 1970's and 1980's
subtle drama, though Angela's Ashes remains a more recent
exploration of the same general sound. From Jane Eyre to The
River, this style of Williams' character development has a rich
history in cinema, and to hear it once again as the world approaches the
mid-2010's is simply astonishing. Time is of no consequence in the
effectiveness of this kind of music, Williams defying all current
conventions of film scoring with quietly soaring results. It is yet
another instance in which the maestro will receive significant attention
during the awards season, a truly rare sentimental throwback.
The ensemble for
The Book Thief is common to
Williams' lighter dramatic efforts, a full orchestra minus most brass
pieces and featuring prominent solos for piano, oboe, and clarinet.
While these three soloists receive the most credit, the harp
performances are just as important, assisting in achieving Williams'
typical mastery of addressing a topic through a delicate child's
perspective. While there are horrific concepts on display in the story
of
The Book Thief, the composer never loses a sense of optimism
in the softly meandering performances he elicits from the ensemble, even
utilizing a pair of exuberant, playful detours of rhythmic spirit. A
feeling of longing is expertly built into the anticipatory lines of
music that inevitably resolve in usual Williams' feel-good fashion in
many of the cues, even if that harmonic satisfaction comes with extreme
understatement. There are two main themes in
The Book Thief, both
equally developed and nurtured frequently by the composer. The lesser
utilized of these by Williams is the first to be debuted; in "One Small
Fact," the composer reaches back to his superb score for
Presumed
Innocent and rearranges its primary theme for an identity that would
later reveal itself as the perseverance theme of the young girl,
adorning her reading and writing cues ("Learning to Read," "Learning to
Write," and "Writing to Mama"). This theme is easily the more engaging
of the two major ideas in the score, affording the listener the most
connections to Williams' past sensibilities. The other main theme spans
from "The Journey to Himmel Street" to "The Book Thief" and maintains
more classical character in its structures and performances, a possible
representation of the era and location of the tale. Both of these
identities are conveyed elegantly by piano, their performances augmented
by string swells and surrounded by the woodwind interludes. The score's
highlights are clearly those moments when Williams allows the full
ensemble, including tasteful French horns, to support these themes,
especially the first one of
Presumed Innocent reminiscence. The
lengthy "The Book Thief" cue at the conclusion of the album is
spectacular, joined by other fuller expressions of gravity earlier in
the score, perhaps led by the crescendo of heartbreak in "The Train
Station," a moment of grandeur for bassoons. Overall,
The Book
Thief is a lovely score that reminds of the best of Williams'
serious children's scores and those with a touch of suspense. While the
closing suite is a clear winner, the mass of the score does suffer from
moments of almost inaudible ambience during which the soloists barely
maintain forward movement. With this drawback in mind, the score fails
to reach the highest rating, but it is nevertheless a remarkable and
impressive continuation of Williams' career. For that fact alone, it
deserves admiration and respect even if it isn't the most overwhelming
of listening experiences.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
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Bias Check:
For John Williams reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.68
(in 91 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.54
(in 363,716 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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