: (Hans Zimmer) Among the many
politically charged anti-apartheid films of the 1980's and 1990's, the
British production of
in 1988 was fairly well
received and awarded. Chris Menges' movie tells the tale of the
screenwriter's own family as they became involved in the movement to
promote equality in South Africa. In 1963 Johannesburg, a young
privileged white girl's world is turned upside down by the exile of her
Communist Party-active father and her mother's participation in a
campaign against apartheid that eventually leads to her arrest. By the
end, the girl joins the cause in protesting the South African
government. The drama is largely a footnote decades later, though it
represented a major step forward in the career of composer Hans Zimmer.
Immersed in an exciting period of his life when he was living in England
and stepping out of the shadow of composer Stanley Myers, Zimmer was
finally receiving his own solo assignments by 1987, when he debuted with
lead credit for the ridiculous comedy
. His work
with Myers on the 1985 movie
without Myers, and it was a
fateful credit that caused him to be discovered and recommended for
not long after. From there, his career was launched.
While
is a modest place for a reputation to earn
its stripes, Zimmer exhibited a number of characteristics in the work
that obviously found an evolved home in
. He had not yet
completely established his own set of assistant writers in 1988, making
this era of film music among the most fascinating for collectors of the
composer. The instrumentation, themes, and style of
is clearly rooted in Zimmer's sound of the late 1980's, a blend of his
familiar synthetics joining with orchestral strings and a handful of
solo accents to preview sounds that would become well familiar not long
after.
The soundtrack for the film is laden with new recordings
of traditional songs of Zimbabwe and South Africa performed for this
occasion by the Messias Choir and achieving a distinct source-like feel.
A trio of covers supplied by Lovemore Majaivana and the Zulu Band also
play a prominent role. Zimmer's score fits between these splashes of
authenticity without making any significant attempt at matching
ethnicity. Recorded in pieces at several separate studios, Zimmer's team
combined the synthesizers typical to his career with varied soloists,
the string orchestra, and traditional vocalizations to achieve a sound
unique to this film. The keyboarded synthetics, drum pads, acoustic
guitar, and electronic wind instruments of
A World Apart are pure
Zimmer of the era, as are the somewhat stylish rock-inspired swing to
his progressions. The orchestration of the strings isn't particularly
complicated and lacks the resounding force that he would command from
the same room just a couple of years later. A penny whistle is a notable
contributor. The African vocals are an early preview of the many times
these tones would intersect with his career, and they tend to be a bit
raw in their presence here. The composer anchors the score with two
themes, the primary one being a very simple, six-note motif that repeats
itself several times in ascending question form before answering itself
with a descending six-note alternative. Neither phrase resolves to key
despite being somewhat inspirational and marginally cool, which is an
interesting comment about the unfinished business in the story's
protagonists. This idea is developed in its highly contemporary stylings
at the outset of "A World Apart Suite," the primary, 18-minute assembly
of the most important cues from the score for the album release. Its
chords vaguely guide the following suspense material before returning to
friendly keyboarding at 7:35 for a pensive moment. This more restrained
tact continues at 10:40, the theme's underlying chords only mingling
with the secondary themes, and 14:30, where Zimmer dissolves the theme
down to solo piano and percussion.
The main theme of
A World Apart anchors the
first three minutes of "A World Apart - End Title" in even more
contemporary shades. The score's heart, though, lies in the secondary
theme for the 13-year-old girl, Molly. The composer supplies a quick
summary on electronic oboe and strings in "Molly's Theme" but provides
its most compelling development in "A World Apart Suite." Heard first in
that track from the strings at 3:50, this melancholy idea explores
elegantly dark pathways prior to enunciating itself fully at 7:57 on the
oboe tones with caring and patience but more than the minimal dose of
Zimmer tragedy at the core. The rendition at 10:56, forcing the oboe
tones up into the penny whistle range, evokes a bit of Ennio Morricone's
The Mission but contains none of the same warmth at this moment.
The theme's secondary lines at 11:50 are more soothing and elegant in
Zimmer's preferred neo-classical sensibilities. The theme's evolution at
13:20 is highly compelling, and the composer's rendition at 16:22 evokes
all the beauty that listeners would come to expect from his quasi-ethnic
dramas and
The Lion King in the coming years. The descending
secondary lines of the Molly theme that close out "A World Apart Suite"
are Zimmer romanticism at its best. A cyclical, rising suspense motif
serves as a third identity in
A World Apart and debuts at 1:12
into that long suite track. Plucked on strings and acoustic guitar, this
motif offers low string drama of pretty significant weight. This idea
expands to even greater depth at 2:54, turns sickly at 5:24 for a
moment, and regains its dramatic form at 10:25 and 12:11, both instances
reminding of the darkness and peril being fought in the film. A few
truly unique ideas also litter the suite, notably a passage at 6:05 that
applies Zimmer's pan pipe effects and choral tones of celebration over
tasteful percussion for a minute. The bulk of the score's dissonant fear
is housed in the second half of this suite as well. The standalone
"Amandla" cue extends electronic textures out of source speech and crowd
noise from the film, but Zimmer does briefly dabble in some lightly
keyboarded ideas at the end of this recording.
The last third of "A World Apart - End Title" very
abruptly shifts to a traditional-like vocal performance over droning
synths and percussion that has no connection to (or even a smooth
transition from) the preceding ultra-modern performances of the main
theme. The juxtaposition between the two halves of the credits is
jarring, to say the least, the first half appropriate for
Black
Rain while the second half essentially source material. The entirety
of the soundtrack for
A World Apart is schizophrenic in this
regard, the authentic traditional representations from vocals and
percussion completely at odds with Zimmer's sometimes uncomfortable
blend of contemporary keyboarding and more appropriately dramatic
strings and wind effects. The two primary themes are each attractive,
the main one purely rooted in the coolness of Zimmer's early career
while the Molly theme a preview of the many lovely character identities
for strings and woodwinds that he would conjure in the coming years. The
album for the soundtrack doesn't do it any favors, the alternating of
the score and traditional pieces, especially with the bulk of the score
forced into Zimmer's usual format of lengthy suite, making the whole
listening experience very unstable. An avid listener will want to pull
those two themes, as well the suspense one, apart into their own
presentations. The original 1988 Milan album only provides about 23
minutes of actual score material once all the other portions are
removed. Sound quality has always been satisfying with this work,
Zimmer's tendency towards an engaging, wet mix at the forefront with
soloists whimsically floating on top already in full effect by this
point. The same flawed presentation anchored by the one massive score
suite has persisted in countless re-issues through the years, Milan
particularly fond of re-packaging its Zimmer scores into collections
with each other, some of them 2-CD to 4-CD sets. While those
compilations are often highly merited,
A World Apart isn't a
highlight on any of them. It's a basically functional score that is
interesting as a preview of the composer's style to come, but it fails
to generate a consistent experience and offers absolutely no narrative
flow. Approach the work with intellectual curiosity more than anything
else.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
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For Hans Zimmer reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.85
(in 128 reviews)
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