Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #604
Written 6/15/98, Revised 11/7/11
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Buy it... for the spirited vintage and re-recorded jazz classics
that were the main reason the film was made.
Avoid it... if you're a James Horner collector for whom the drab
and uninspired orchestral underscore will not be worth navigating
through the jazz to find.
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| Horner |
Swing Kids: (James Horner) Few people know that
during the height of Adolf Hitler's reign in Germany, there was a loyal
and popular following of American jazz music in the country. The youths
that enjoyed the likes of Benny Goodman and Count Basie were, of course,
engaging in a lifestyle that the Third Reich considered illegal
behavior, and the film attempts to show their resilience in the name of
music, to an extent. Where Swing Kids utterly fails as a movie is
in its treatment of everything outside of the jazz itself. Almost as
though the filmmakers made the 1930's jazz the main attraction of the
film, they managed to neglect the gravity of the surrounding social and
political events. While you become attached to a certain number of
"swing kids" in the story, the film makes only vague and distant
references to the persecution and war around them. When the youths are
forced to either enlist in the army or be sent to concentration camps,
their reactions aren't really clear, for in their jazz-centered view on
life, they seem to have no feelings whatsoever for or against the Jewish
people. This is especially strange given the complete logical misstep
that the 1993 film makes by forgetting that if it weren't for Jews,
there wouldn't have been music by Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw to enjoy
in the first place. At any rate, the movie's lack of focus is important
for soundtrack collectors because that disjointed attention within the
plot causes significant problems for the album representing the film as
well. Composer James Horner was at the height of his discovery of the
human drama genre in 1993, a year that featured both The Pelican
Brief and Searching for Bobby Fischer, and he would be called
upon to once again to place the same weighty hand of orchestral emotion
on Swing Kids. The only problem is that Horner was put into a
position to write a score for only the horrors of war, and he would have
absolutely nothing to contribute in the genre of the classic jazz, which
is a shame given that the composer had proven in Field of Dreams
and in snippets from his comedy works that he was indeed capable of
offering an extension of that sound. His respectful tones unfortunately
reflect nothing new in the man's career.
To say that Horner's contribution to
Swing Kids
is overshadowed by the jazz is an understatement. When discussing the
actual 23 minutes of original score available on the commercial album, a
disclaimer must be made right at the start that Horner seems to have
bowed to the jazz music in the sense that he doesn't really attempt
write anything that augments it or competes with it. Fully orchestral,
the score rumbles in the depths of heavily mixed bass strings, with
melodramatic classical chord progressions ominously churning the
background as an adult choir (as opposed to his usual children's or
strictly women's choirs) sometimes conveys vocals with the same style as
in the opening and closing of
Red Heat. A sense of urgency in his
deliberate snare and cymbal-tapping is defied by the often
excruciatingly slow tempo of his cues. Perhaps this is just an illusion
due to the score being surrounded by such quick jazz pieces, but
compared to other applicable war material by Horner, including
Enemy
at the Gates in a most related sense, only the tolling of chimes
really distinguishes this music over the composer's similar assignments.
As the film has difficulty pinpointing the exact personalities of the
kids and their reasons for doing what they do, Horner stays away from
the murky waters of such personalities. In fact, he provides no thematic
material throughout the film whatsoever, further allowing his result to
slip away very quickly from memory. The classic Horner four-note motif
of evil is transferred to thunderous bass expressions in "Arvid Beaten,"
however. The jazz, on the other hand, was obviously the main intent for
making the film, and even down to its louder mixing on album, the
producers had this music first and foremost on their minds. The
selections are very good in most cases, with a strong collection from
the era applied to the film. The combined album is an extreme
disappointment, though. Viewers of the film will want a compilation of
the jazz heard in its length, and Horner collectors will likely have
less than a 50/50 chance of being even remotely interested in that jazz.
Unfortunately, the album mingles the two elements, interspersing score
tracks in between jazz (both vintage and re-recorded) and causing both
to suffer. The album was badly in need of separation of these two halves
of music, because Horner's score does little more than cast a troubling
shadow over Benny Goodman. As for the composer's part, the slight
inspiration of individuality in the final cue cannot compensate for the
extremely drab nature of the score's entirety.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
Bias Check:
For James Horner reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.15
(in 108 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.23
(in 203,515 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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