Not surprisingly, some film music critics hail
Stanley & Iris as a superior effort from the maestro, but when
you look at it with the perspective of Williams' larger career in mind,
the composer really did nothing to meet his own high standards by
injecting much needed inspiration into the film. As such, the score is
one of his rare failures. Despite its flaws, Williams' predictable music
for
Stanley & Iris is pretty and respectful. It reminds of a more
innocent time and place, just as scores like
A Patch of Blue and
Raggedy Man existed in the same role for Jerry Goldsmith. But
Williams' subdued character scores, with
The Accidental Tourist
most recent at the time, fluctuate greatly between the magical and the
mundane, and
Stanley & Iris gravitates towards the latter.
Designed for piano, woodwinds, and strings, the score's tempos are
relaxing and its volumes are restrained. Its two sweet themes are simple
and repetitive, drawing similar performances from piano and flute in
several cues. The piano is the heart of the urban piece, often setting a
soothing rhythm in the background while a woodwind performs a central
theme in the middle ranges and a moderate string section provides your
elevator music-like accompaniment in higher ranges. An occasional
trumpet and French horn repeat the same themes again, utilizing familiar
rhythms. Then it's the cellos. Then it's back to the piano. Only once
does Williams' piano spur the score into showing signs of life; at the
start of "The Bicycle," the faster, more ambitious performance emphasis
from the opening of
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial's "Over the Moon"
concert piece gets the cue rolling with gusto. The composer had already
proven himself capable of providing truly engrossing music in the form
of smaller character themes, having done so specifically for the
director several decades prior in
Conrack. There were restrained
sections of
Hook that did just that concurrently, and from the
same year, the family theme from
Presumed Innocent, which shares
many characteristics with the
Stanley & Iris melody (as heard in
the opening and closing cues on the original album), express similar
ideas with much more authenticity.
The usual, brilliant twists of key and rhythm aren't
present in
Stanley & Iris; it is about as simple-minded as the
composer can get, and compared to his usual level of complexity, the
score fails to maintain much interest. Expect the tempo to always crawl
along as if it directly reflects the DeNiro character's lack of literacy
skills. Enthusiasts of Williams' technique of fluttering between two
adjacent notes on piano or woodwinds will appreciate a fair amount of
that sound in a few places, especially in the secondary theme of the
score. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this work is its
strikingly consistent tone from start to finish, rarely deviating in
emotional range from start to finish; the moments of despair are just as
conservatively touching as the moments of exuberance. For the latter,
Williams simply layers more lines of players onto the performance to
denote a minor plot triumph, but that distinction remains too subtle to
really supply any narrative in the music alone. The original 1990 album
from Varèse Sarabande was only 29 minutes in length and fell out
of print only a few years after production. Although another pressing
eventually resurfaced and normalized its price, it was always curious to
see collectors shell out over $50 for
Stanley & Iris, because it
is among Williams' most underachieving and ineffective scores in the
digital era. The same label revisited
Stanley & Iris in 2017,
expanding its presentation as a limited Club title to 43 minutes, joined
by another 15 minutes of alternate film versions of several cues. Don't
expect the additional material from the score to illuminate anything
notably different from the music already available on the 1990 CD, and
some listeners won't find much to distinguish between the film and album
edits of cues presented on the album. Arguably more important about the
2017 CD is its inclusion of Williams' 1972 score for Ritt's
Pete 'n'
Tillie, very much the equivalent of
Stanley & Iris for its
era. Utilizing the same type of ensemble and exuding an identical
spirit,
Pete 'n' Tillie will not overwhelm anyone but it does
feature a potentially more compelling theme of romance than its later
sibling. The sound quality for the 1972 score is reasonable for the era
as well. Together,
Pete 'n' Tillie and
Stanley & Iris are
a logical pairing and make for an effortless, if not totally forgettable
listening experience.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
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