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| Newman |
Tolkien: (Thomas Newman) Considering the immense
popularity of the cinematic adaptations of the classic J.R.R. Tolkien
tales of Middle Earth in the early 21st Century, it's surprising that it
took until 2019 before a high-profile biographical movie truly connected
the author's personal life with the inspiration behind those stories.
Director Dome Karukoski's
Tolkien follows all the formative
events in the author's life as they relate to the moment at the very end
of the movie where he begins writing
The Hobbit, especially in
how the imagery and devastation of World War I impact his thinking. His
personal friendships in school form the basis of the famed fellowship of
The Lord of the Rings, while his love for a childhood friend and
eventual wife develops into the Elvish women so prominent in the fantasy
stories. The terrible landscapes of the battlefield are shown through
his perspective in ways that suggest visions of dragons and black riders
via his imagination, setting the basis for everything related to Mordor.
Most importantly,
Tolkien shows the author's discovery of ancient
languages as a passion, and it is here where much of his fantasy world
congeals. It's a decent examination of how the events of his life
directly led to certain elements of his famous works, though the film
failed to stir much interest from audiences or critics. Complaints about
the movie's poor handling of the author's religion were its most major
controversy, though there were also numerous artistic liberties taken
with actual history. None of that is important if you approach
Tolkien from an earthy, impressionistic perspective of mythology,
language, and imagination, though, and that's exactly the tact of
composer Thomas Newman for the picture. The music by Howard Shore for
Peter Jackson's Middle Earth films is legendary and will cast a
significant cloud over
Tolkien's soundtrack for many listeners.
Given ownership and licensing issues, there was never a possibility for
even hints of Shore's music to be adapted into this film, and that's
generally fine. The one exception is the final duo of scenes in which
the author previews the Middle Earth stories to his family in the woods
and then sits down to write "The Hobbit;" these scenes would really have
benefitted, in an unattainably perfect world, from a few nascent hints
of Shore's themes for the history of the ring and the Shire.
Despite the lack of pop-culture connections to Shore's
music, Newman provides an appropriately respectful but rather dreamy
score for
Tolkien, handling the concept with a blend of fantasy
atmosphere and character-centric melodies. The score has none of the
scope of those by Shore, but Newman does intriguingly scale back some of
the same underlying choral and instrumental tones into his own mould,
offering, for instance, soothingly chanted vocals for connections to
Elvish inspiration and Hardanger fiddle to tie in Scandinavian
mythology. This music is, to some degree, what Newman might provide to
understated scenes of Jackson's films, and the emotional appeal is
similar even if the size of the recording is not. That said,
Tolkien is an absolutely stereotypical Newman score, defining
many of the characteristics that his collectors appreciate the most in
his dramatic music. If you were to create a checklist of twenty "Thomas
Newman trademarks," this score would contain at least fifteen of them,
and they are attractively packaged into an introspective but pretty and
mostly easy listening experience. For those desiring to hear Newman's
tonally melodic mode with a blend of symphonic elements and his
specialty instrumentation,
Tolkien remains a consistently
wonderful listening experience. He applies the fiddle, viola de gamba,
mandolin, dulcimer, recorder, pennywhistle, various high metallic
percussion, and a few guitar-like variants on top of the orchestral
string section, unashamed synthetic drones as needed, and the processed
vocal effects. It's truly a quintessential dramatic ensemble for Newman,
producing accessible rhythmic passages that are downright gorgeous and
require a lossless presentation on album. On the other hand, whereas the
score excels in tone, it struggles mightily in its thematic
delineations. Newman conjures upwards of ten unique melodies for the
score, and while most of them do recur for various concepts or
characters, they never enjoy any significant interaction with each other
or evolve significantly on their own. In some ways, the score is like a
nature documentary for underwater creatures, the motific development
restricted to a handful of scenes and no overarching structural identity
pulling all of these ideas together. There is no main theme of
Tolkien amongst the many that meander through the score, and the
ambience is no worse because of it. But it thus becomes a score that
requires little thought or close attention.
Among the recurring melodies in
Tolkien, the
theme for the four boys' group, the TCBS, may be the most stylish, with
processed vocals over twinkling percussive rhythms and fluid string
interludes. It debuts at 0:14 into "The TCBS," with variants in spirit
during the engaging pair of "A Good Man in the Dirt" and "Sunlit," the
latter among the best Newman moments in years. It is reprised in
original form in "Helheimr (End Crawl)," where Newman closes out the
credits with a Finnish folk piece on zither after the director mentioned
his love of it. A theme for Tolkien himself is rather upbeat in the
spirit of
Finding Nemo, heard in the middle of "John Ronald" and
during all of "Everything That's Good." Newman's theme for fear is
defined by four ascending notes in a murky haze, dominating three cues
at 0:12 and 0:50 into "The Great War" and far more aggressive at 0:25
into "Army of the Dead" and at 0:21 into "Black Rider." Extended
variants of this, the score's only challenging material, fester in the
crescendo of "Rugby" and stew in lighter shades during "Starlit" on
piano and voice. A mysticism and imagination motif consists of five
descending notes, often plucked, and meanders at 1:09 into "White as
Bone" and opening "Eik (Oak)" more clearly. A comfort theme of
three-note descending choral phrases soothingly occupies all of
"Vinátta (Friendship)" and the start of "Other Sorts of Scars." A
theme for Tolkien's friend, Geoffrey, is conveyed on piano and harp late
in "Geoffrey" and reprised very similarly in "Dark Magic." Most
intriguing is a passion theme taking the form of a somewhat uncertain
piano melody, applied in "Lúthien Tinúviel," "Dutch
Courage," and "Scuppered (Ancient Things)," typically over a wash of
strings, and providing fragments to open "The Ascanius" and inform the
strangely optimistic ensemble ambience of that cue. A notable singular
highlight comes in the dreamy theme at 0:14 and 1:08 into "Impecunious
Circumstances." Several of these ideas merge into the progressions and
personality of the pivotal "Fellowship" cue that concludes the
narrative. Few cues in
Tolkien fail to explore one of these
themes, and with their consistently pleasant renderings, the listening
experience as a whole is an effortlessly whimsical joy. If you remove
the six minutes of the fear theme and perhaps the five minutes of the
relatively sparse mysticism and imagination motif, then you are left
with forty minutes of pure Thomas Newman bliss. Its lack of consolidated
thematic coherence remains a significant problem intellectually, but
this is a score for your heart, not your brain.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For Thomas Newman reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.14
(in 37 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.18
(in 60,837 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert includes a note from the director about the score.
