IN DREAMS

ELLIOT GOLDENTHAL

Rating:

Original Review: Elliot Goldenthal is, without question, one of the most brilliantly talented, spectacularly original, technically gifted and highly respected composers working in the film music industry today. Why, then, does his music always have to be so damn inaccessible? Despite what I, or others, may think, Neil Jordan obviously feels that Goldenthal is the man to give his movies their musical voice. This is their fourth collaboration in almost as many years, after Interview with the Vampire, Michael Collins and The Butcher Boy. In Dreams, which stars Annette Bening, Aidan Quinn, Stephen Rea and Robert Downey Jr., tells the story of a woman haunted by chilling premonitions a murder which has not yet happened, and her increasingly desperate attempts to get the local police to believe her fantastical story before the serial killer really does finish off the small child in her dreams.

I suppose, in the context of the film, Goldenthal's music adds the right dimension of skewed reality, horror, shocks and unsettling psychoses the twisted story demanded. On CD, however, the music is simply grating. The first cue, 'Agitato Dolorosa', is a prime example: it reminds me occasionally of Christopher Young's Hellraiser score with its soft, breathy metal percussion, but whereas Young's score had a chilling theme, Goldenthal's cue simply presents tense, screaming saxophones over a bed of savage, anarchic strings without any melodic content to make it even slightly enjoyable. This familiar eardrum-shattering dissonance continues in cues such as 'Wraith Loops', the chaotic 'Rubber Room Stomp', the thunderous 'While We Sleep', and the hideously cacophonous 'Appellatron' and 'Scytheoplicity', both of which use the saxophones again, as well something called a "Deaf Elk" guitar (probably named after the end result of making the aforementioned beast listen to it).

So have I got anything good to say about this CD? Well, 'Claire's Nocturne' and 'Andante' are soft, moody piano solos which basically just tinkle along for a couple of minutes, but at least they are listenable. Tantalising fragments of a dark, gothic theme are presented in 'The Pull of Red', 'Pulled In By Red' and 'Rebecca's Abduction' (the best cue on the album) before they head back into the atonal void. Roy Orbison's classic song 'In Dreams' is good, and while the inclusion of The Andrews Sisters' 'Don't Sit Under The Apple Tree' may seem a little peculiar, it is actually an essential plot device in the film and has a strangely surreal quality, especially considering the style of the music immediately before and after it. However, even Goldenthal's own original song 'Dream Baby' refuses to be either completely melodic or completely dissonant, instead inhabiting some in-between musical flux where his offbeat orchestrations and Elizabeth Fraser's oddly ethereal voice collide in a way which is both intriguing and infuriating.

I really, really wish my mind would let me give In Dreams a higher rating than I have, but my heart tells me that even a two star score is extremely generous. I want to like this score. I want to be able to marvel at the musical inventiveness and wonder at Goldenthal's prodigious mastery of his orchestra. I wanted to do all of those things. But, in all honesty, I couldn't wait for the CD to end.

Track Listing: Running Time: 49 minutes 48 seconds

Varèse Sarabande VSD-6001 (1998)

Music composed by Elliot Goldenthal. Performed by The London Metropolitan Orchestra. Conducted by Jonathan Sheffer and Edward Shearmur. Orchestrations by Robert Elhai and Elliot Goldenthal. Featured musical soloists Page Hamilton, Mark Stewart, Andrew Hawkins, David Reid, Eric Hubel, Bruce Williamson, Rolf Wilson, Jonathan Rees, Roger Chase, Andrew Schulman and Sally Heath. Recorded and mixed by Joel Iwataki. Edited by Joel Iwataki and Curtis Roush. Mastered by Vlado Meller. Album produced by Teese Gohl and Elliot Goldenthal.


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