CRY THE BELOVED COUNTRY

JOHN BARRY

Rating:

Original Review: No matter where John Barry's movies are set - be it the plains of the Serengeti, or the rugged coasts of Cornwall, or the vast grassland of the American frontier, or even outer space - the music is generally the same. His music for Cry The Beloved Country is firmly rooted in the same melodic area as many of his famous scores, despite being set in a location with strong and vibrant musical traditions of its own: South Africa.

The film is directed by Darrell James Roodt, and is based on the controversial best-seller by Alan Paton about two men - a successful white businessmen and a backwoods black preacher - who are reluctantly brought together when they travel to Johannesburg to attend a murder enquiry, with the spectre of the Apartheid regime looming ominously in the background. The presence of Richard Harris and James Earl Jones in the two lead roles lend a certain amount of weight and gravity to a film which, somewhat surprisingly, failed to spark any kind of audience acceptance and flopped dismally at the box office upon its opening in 1995. Subsequently, both the score and film have slowly received a great deal of critical acclaim.

John Barry has gone down the "African" road many times in the past, notably with his scores Out of Africa, Born Free and Zulu. It is this latter score to which Cry The Beloved Country bears the most resemblance - not through the use of any powerful timpanis, but because the film's secondary theme (heard for the first time in 'The Train to Johannesburg' and subsequently in 'I've Been A Bad Woman', 'Christ Forsake Me Not', 'Go Well Umfundisi' and others) is nothing more than a slowed-down version of the Zulu main title, re-orchestrated for light woodwinds. While its use here could be taken as a musical in-joke on Barry's part, I nevertheless find it difficult to believe that a composer like Barry, from whom melodies seem to flow so easily, would be content to re-present a thirty year old theme almost verbatim.

The new theme, heard primarily in 'Main Title - The Letter', and again in cues such as 'Do Not Spoil My Pleasure' and 'The Fifteenth Day', is an archetypal Barry melody, with long-lined strings above a grinding bass and cello counter with accompaniment from soft brasses and woodwinds. For the majority of the score these two themes dominate, with occasional breaks in style with the more sombre 'You've Been Robbed', the poetically romantic 'He Was Our Only Child', the strident 'What Sort Of Life Did They Lead' (which, strangely, reminds me of parts of Conan The Destroyer), the rather dark 'Bastards Bloody Bastards' and 'The Shadow of Death', and the hopeful 'Cry Cry The Beloved Country' and 'The Boys Club' which, even more strangely, seem to presage the main theme from Titanic.

In addition to the score, there are three songs performed by top South African artists The Havana Sisters, Dorothy Masuka and Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the latter of which have recently received a large amount of exposure here in the UK through their splendid musical accompaniment for the Heinz TV commercials. Beyond that, Cry The Beloved Country is nothing if not attractive, but it's so similar to every other John Barry score of the last eight or nine years that it's difficult to pick out a single thing which makes it any better or worse than any of the rest. In the end, if you like John Barry, you are guaranteed to like this score as well.

Track Listing: Running Time: 54 minutes 18 seconds

Epic Soundtrax EK-67354 (1995)

Music composed and conducted by John Barry. Performed by The English Chamber Orchestra. Recorded and mixed by Shawn Murphy. Mastered by Pat Sullivan. Album produced by John Barry.


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