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| Newman |
The War: (Thomas Newman) There was much to praise
about the topic of interpersonal conflict in Jon Avnet's 1994 movie,
The War, especially in its portrayal of bullying between
children. Its story of inner-demons and neighborly battles is set in
1970's Mississippi, where two families and a group of children fight
over the construction and custody of a tree house. Leading one of the
families is Kevin Costner as a defeated Vietnam War veteran, whose
position on the bullying of his children by the neighboring family is
awkwardly peaceful, avoiding confrontation whenever possible due his
troubling experiences in the war. His struggles to find employment and
redeem himself for inactions in conflict are countered by the optimism
of his children, who ultimately prevail in morally defeating their junk
yard-worthy opponents. The movie's bittersweet ending doesn't make
The War an easy film to watch (and in part led to the
production's financial loss), but the performance of a young Elijah Wood
as the lead of the children was universally applauded. One of the film's
more interesting elements is its original score by Thomas Newman, which
was forced to contend with several notable placements of 1970's songs in
the picture. The project represented the second of Newman's four
collaborative efforts with Avnet in the 1990's, the partnership ending
thereafter. They had completed
Fried Green Tomatoes a few years
earlier, a likeable movie that yielded a very spirited score from Newman
that is best remembered for its remarkable saturation with the tone of
America's Deep South. The setting in
The War is the same but the
personality of the movie is a touch darker, forcing the composer to take
some of the familiar elements from his prior success and adapt them into
a more solemn but equally uplifting variation. Newman had proven himself
very capable of writing convincing music for the Deep South in his early
1990's scores, the style lending itself well to the composer's
continuing development of unusual instrumental colors despite rising to
fame mostly because of his symphonic efforts. A variety of interesting
tones are applied to
The War, including much harsher
representations of the region than heard in
Fried Green Tomatoes,
but the re-emergence of soulful female vocals together with the
orchestra is what steals the show once again. The resulting work has
highlights that will make it a higher priority for listeners than
Up
Close & Personal and
Red Corner later in the
collaboration.
Newman does little to mask the difference between good
and evil in
The War, very clearly handling the protagonists with
the tonal, accessible expressions of symphonic lyricism and the junk
yard villains (and the dirtiness of the location in general) with a
variety of specialty instruments that is led by the growling bass
capabilities of the didgeridoo and banjo. There are faint soul and
gospel leanings in some of the passages that bridge these two parts of
the score, especially with the reprise of the vocal usage from
Fried
Green Tomatoes, but Newman isn't afraid to make the Deep South sound
like a hostile foreign planet with his more ominous expressions on the
specialty items, summed up well by "Junkyard Billy." Even when adopting
a bluegrass spirit, as in "Trolley," the trademark Newman piano and
struck percussion is overwhelmed by the more sinister plucked
contributors. Also influencing the score is the presence of exotic
woodwinds, starting in "Hornets" and likely an acknowledgement of the
Vietnam connections to American life (which dismayed critics as well).
In "2nd Vietnam," this usage is extended significantly and given slight
adagio treatment from strings for emphasized agony. Some of the
alienating instrumental tones heard here would be understandably
expanded upon for
Red Corner a few years later. Not all is sour
in the dressing of the location, however, Newman resorting to his usual
solitary oboe solos for restrained beauty in "Juliette," "Life Be a
Bowlful," and the closing moments of "Hospital." These three cues
contain one of the score's secondary motifs, but all such ideas in
The War are overshadowed by Newman's main theme, which dominates
the rest of the material with its optimistic beauty. Heard first in "The
War (Main Title)," this identity is rarely touched upon in the score (a
reprise of the strings from that initial cue is notable in the latter
half of "2nd Vietnam") but will absolutely break your heart in "Angel
Pen," which closes out the work with arguably the most lovely symphonic
and solo female vocal combination of the composer's career. This cue
compensates for all the challenges and ills of the rest of the score
with a redemptive spirit that belongs in any collection of the
composer's early 1990's lyricism. Aside from this stunning track, the
album release is rather forgettable, the songs highly reminiscent of
Forrest Gump (which was still hugely popular at the time
The
War debuted) but at least congregated at the start of the product.
The four cues containing the restrained, soulful vocals, including the
phenomenal "Angel Pen," provide ten minutes of engaging material, but
the score's rougher side will take much longer to embrace, assuming you
can ever appreciate Newman's rougher edges.
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| 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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