THE BUTCHER BOY

ELLIOT GOLDENTHAL

Rating:

Original Review: Neil Jordan's version of Patrick McCabe's celebrated novel The Butcher Boy told the story of young Francie Brady (Eamonn Owens), a ten year old lad in rural Ireland in the early 1960s. Left to fend for himself by his alcoholic father (Stephen Rea) after his mother commits suicide, Francie immerses himself in a fantasy world of cowboys and indians, comic books and television shows to escape from the never-ending torment of "real life". But Francie, like his mother, has mental and behavioural problems which manifest themselves in different ways. He is both a bully and a tearaway, prone to acts of mischief which, left unchecked, can quickly turn to violence, and he also has recurring visions of the Virgin Mary, and of exploding atomic bombs. As the visions get stronger and his home life gets worse and worse, Francie starts to vent his frustrations solely on the prim and proper Mrs. Nugent (Fiona Shaw), who he wrongly believes to be the source of all his ills.

Elliot Goldenthal's score is almost as strange as the film itself in its execution, but contains moments of what surely can only be classified as musical genius. Despite being best known for his inventive dissonance and chilling horror and thriller scores, Goldenthal shows off his melodic tendencies in several cues. However, even though there are few identifiable "tunes" in The Butcher Boy, one could hardly call any of them conventional. Quite a lot of the album is taken up by a variety of source music selections, from a new version of 'Mack the Knife' to the soaringly beautiful hymn 'Sweet Heart of Jesus' and Sinead O'Connor's performance of the title song 'The Butcher Boy'. In terms of inventiveness, though, Goldenthal's eight cues undoubtedly take centre stage.

In quite a few cues, Goldenthal uses a combination of hammond organ, saxophone, guitar, accordion and percussion in an attempt to capture the world of young Francie, but from the skewed point of view of the protagonist with regard to his own supposedly light-hearted antics. In the opening cue 'The Francie Brady Show' and in parts of 'Blessed Mothers Carnival Night', Goldenthal's music is almost like rock and roll, with superbly catchy tunes and a swing beat taking centre stage. This pseudo-comic style is further developed in several other cues, but the experimental nature of Goldenthal's work is never far away, and often comes leaking and oozing its way to the forefront, pushing the tonalities to one side and replacing them with difficult, often quite jarring moments of dissonance.

The clever thing about Goldenthal's music is the way in which it mimics the mental state of young Francie perfectly. By taking and manipulating musical elements from a vast array of different sources, the score often takes on an almost hallucinatory quality, which you can never quite make sense of in your mind. Something starts, and by the time you've figured out what it is, something even more peculiar has come to take its place. Like Francie himself, you are never able to be comfortable with the things going on around you, with everything conflicting and crashing inside your head, and if you're not careful it can drive you insane.

The cues which stand out the most for me are the twinkly 'Pig Fur Elise', which mixes extracts of Mozart's famous classical piece with a pair of hooting saxophones and builds to a faster tempo as it progresses; the cacophonous 'Blessed Mothers Carnival Night', which underscores Francie's final encounter with Mrs Nugent, and the downright bizarre 'Francie Brady Not Our Lady', which almost defies description but features some hideously clever saxophone writing. In fact, only the understated 'Tune for Da' comes across as being anything approaching normal, and is best described as a variation on his own 'Kitty's Waltz' from Michael Collins - a slow, dour but comparatively beautiful melody for orchestra, accordion and choir.

Elliot Goldenthal won the Los Angeles Film Critics' Best Score award for this film in 1998, a sure acknowledgement that his work was an integral part of the movie's critical success. Without having seen the film and knowing how Goldenthal's music works in context, I'm sure I would have hated almost every moment of The Butcher Boy. As standalone music, this score is nothing if not challenging, and will certainly not appeal to the broad range of film music fans. But, with the advantage of hindsight, I can understand Goldenthal's mindset and understand why he wrote this score the way he did. He may not be my favourite composer, but he is certainly one of the most intelligent practitioners working in the film music industry today.

Track Listing: Running Time: 38 minutes 48 seconds

Edel/Cinerama 0022892CIN (1997)

Music composed by Elliot Goldenthal. Conducted by Edward Shearmur. Orchestrations by Robert Elhai and Elliot Goldenthal. Featured musical soloists Mark Bennett, Bruce Williamson, Scott Robinson, Gil Goldstein, Eddie Hessian, Mark Stewart, Bill Moersch, Terry Silverlight, Richard Martinez and Elliot Goldenthal. "Ave Maria" written by Franz Schubert and performed by John McCormack. Recorded and mixed by James P. Nichols and Steve McLaughlin. Edited by Michael Connell. Album produced by Matthias Gohl and Elliot Goldenthal.

Cinemusic Online
Filmtracks
Movie Wave: Review by James Southall (****)
Score!
Scorelogue


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