Horner has always had the ability to tickle the senses
with flowing, seemingly detached woodwind performances that are as
beautiful as they are elusive.
House of Cards employs the flutes
in ways identical to the forest environments of
The Spitfire
Grill and
The New World. The motifs shared between these
scores are remarkably similar but no less enticing, especially with the
adaptation of the flute's role into the rhythmic portions of
House of
Cards. The girl in the story is essentially afforded three themes,
the last of which actually providing the most impact on the score. Heard
in "House of Cards" and the two "Virtual Reality" cues, Horner
introduces swirling percussion akin to his 1980's fantasy music of a
lighter touch, allowing the fluttering piano, triangles, tapped cymbals,
blurting secondary flutes, and other precise instruments to form a
Philip Glass-like bed of fluid movement while the girl's imagination is
represented by the omnipresent flute motif. Naturally, a darker version
of this idea exists in "The Roof" and "Near Accident." A lovely reunion
theme for the girl and her mother is perhaps technically the primary
idea for the film, a lullaby heard briefly in "Arriving Home" and
returning when her mind is freed in "Reunion in Time." This identity,
vaguely connected to
Cocoon in progression, buoyantly opens
"Closing Credits" with all the sincere innocence of Horner's plethora of
children's themes of the era. A third theme, rooted in the Mayan
location, starkly opens the score in "Opening Credits - The
Processional," lingers with troublesome effect in "Distant Memories,"
and returns in full in "Reunion in Time." This material is the score's
least interesting, applying pan flutes and droning electronic beats and
tones in ways that plagued several other Horner scores. In general, the
redemptive passages in
House of Cards will remind of
The
Rocketeer and the ominously suspenseful portions will, strangely
enough, recall Christopher Young's mysterious parts of
Hellraiser
II in the majority of "The Dream." On the whole, Horner's work for
House of Cards is extremely well presented in terms of a
narrative flow, and the three cues of rhythmic activity surrounding the
imagination theme are definitely recommended for any Horner. The same
could be said about the conservatively pretty "Closing Credits."
Otherwise, the score is a bit mundane despite its impressive quotient of
magic. The only album of the score was released in the form of 1,500
copies by Intrada Records in 2009, selling out almost immediately. It's
a well presented album of attractive music, but it doesn't merit
extraordinary resale prices.
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