Filmtracks: Rebuilding Paradise (Lorne Balfe/Hans Zimmer)

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Written 9/13/22

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Buy it... if you want to feel the misery of total loss in your music, Lorne Balfe and Hans Zimmer providing hazy atmospheres and drab thematic constructs that set a consistently somber mood.

Avoid it... if you demand more than static and lifeless performances for a topic of human suffering, this recording so careful to avoid overstatement that it achieves very little emotional connection.

Balfe

Zimmer

Rebuilding Paradise: (Lorne Balfe/Hans Zimmer) For those who have assumed that the utility PG&E stands for "Pigs, Greed, & Excess," the California wildfires of 2018 proved that "incompetence" needed to be somewhere in that name as well. Mismanagement of the power grid by Pacific Gas & Electric was a major contributor to the most expensive fires in history that year, eventually causing the company to assume countless billions of dollars in damages and declare bankruptcy. Particularly poignant was the Camp Fire of Northern California that wiped out entire towns and killed civilians and firefighters alike. Several documentary films have been made about this fire, and particularly its devastation of the town of Paradise, which saw almost all of the its structures destroyed, displacing tens of thousands of residents. One such examination of the fire and the tale of individual perseverance was helmed by Ron Howard, who began producing a steady stream of documentaries at the conclusion of the 2010's. His 2020 film, Rebuilding Paradise, shows footage of the fire from those that experienced it, segueing to more traditional shots of recovery and rebuilding in the months following the tragedy. Howard isn't shy to remind audiences of the utility company's role in the destruction, either, advocacy and politics never far behind in a movie such as this one. Critics widely embraced the picture as one of the director's better efforts of the era. Howard's documentaries have often eschewed typical film scores, but Rebuilding Paradise was different, and the director reached out to his usual collaborator for feature films, Hans Zimmer, to assist with the somewhat minimal amount of score to be placed in the picture. Zimmer has a history of contributing to and producing documentary music in a wide swath of areas, almost always with a collaborator in the lead. His partner of choice for Rebuilding Paradise was Lorne Balfe, who takes main production credit for this score and receives help from four ghostwriters.

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Balfe's stated strategy with the music for Rebuilding Paradise was to understate it as much as possible, providing only a few moments of dramatic catharsis for an otherwise downbeat and deadly serious topic. The general tone of the music on Rebuilding Paradise exhibits mannerisms of both Zimmer and Balfe at times, though the score's restrained demeanor doesn't allow much unique development to emerge. The personality of the work is drab and depressing in its tone and hazy atmospheres. It's not meant to be really pleasant and is nearly inaudible in some parts. It rarely rubs the listener the wrong way until late, the distorted piano over troubled murkiness in "Memorial" really obnoxious. Otherwise, it's a stewing, brooding experience outside of rare glimmers of hope, with sterile and static, lifeless performances performing structures that are completely inelegant in all their facets. Keyboarding is dominant over a wash of string and brass tones, guitar and synthetic accents sometimes meandering in the background. No distinctive soloists stand apart or are credited as standouts, though individual lines that suggest woodwinds are provided at the height of "We're Coming Back." Each of the composers' themes function as four-note groupings, background chords centered on pairs within that scheme. A main theme informs two offshoots, though neither of these alterations really takes flight with consistency. Introduced during the entirety of "Rebuilding Paradise" in one very long, tedious crescendo, the main theme is conveyed by strings and brass strokes joined late by acoustic guitar ramblings. This idea is essentially a wavering, descending series of four notes in slow cycles, starting at key. A second phrase has one rising progression at the end, though both phrases apply broken chords that would make Carter Burwell proud. Its performance in this cue conveys itself as monotonous and unstoppable, like the fire. The theme is layered by slurred string effects in "Return to Ashes," distorted and annoying, and takes a Thomas Newman turn in "Fire Reunited Family" with fuller strings, plucked rhythms, and fluttering piano figures.

The main theme of Rebuilding Paradise is expanded into other meandering lines in "Aftermath" and turns more lyrical in "We're Coming Back," where those passages from "Aftermath" are further explored. The tone of the loftier performance in "We're Coming Back" provides the most expressive soundscape in the score, as it does not simply resort to basic volume or power to supply gravity. The main theme is accelerated but battered in the keyboarded cloudiness of "Love of the Land," but it's barely recognizable by this point. The two thematic offshoots of the main theme for Rebuilding Paradise are highlights, but their presentations are brief. A hope motif still uses four-note phrases like the main theme, but it does so in more dynamic progressions. It receives anthemic treatment at 4:17 into "Rebuilding Paradise," closing out cue on low piano; this cue ends on a single orphaned note, likely unfinished by design. This alteration is shifted a bit to open "One Year Anniversary" on piano. Meanwhile, a different version of the main theme, possibly for the fire itself, also uses slow, four-note phrases in pairs but this time turns them ascending. This idea is developed throughout "Day of Fire," adding some sadness on high strings in middle of the cue and melodramatic heights for those sounds at the end. It melds with the hope version of the theme for a stomping rendition late in "One Year Anniversary" that supplies a slight dose of synthetic choral tones for an artificially grandiose triumph. The entirety of the score is inartful in this way, stumbling through aimless atmospheres for much of its length and pounding away at the tail end of crescendos without any sophistication for its moments in the sun. The unsatisfying, short album (primarily digital in release but offered on CD internationally) gives the listener absolutely zero narrative arc, its last two cues highly annoying in their deliberately atonal and somewhat distorted lines of monotony. Zimmer would offer far more interesting and palatable soundscapes for Hillbilly Elegy later the same year. What little warmth that exists in "We're Coming Back," along with the anthemic glimpse of hope at the end of "Rebuilding Paradise," cannot salvage the overall experience from one of quietly disturbing misery. ** @Amazon.com: CD or Download

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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.

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