SNAKE EYES

RYUICHI SAKAMOTO

Rating:

Original Review: Snake Eyes opens with one of the most technically brilliant opening sequences I have ever witnessed in a movie theatre: at a championship boxing match in Atlantic City, Nicolas Cage (playing a flamboyant, dangerously-close-to-being-corrupt cop) shouts at energetically into a golden cellular phone while taking the viewer on a whirlwind ride around the cavernous arena, briefly introducing every major character in the movie, in one unbroken 10-minute take. It's a typically over the top cinematic moment from cult director Brian De Palma, whose visual style never deserts him even when the narrative thread and acting performances disappear down the drain. The movie itself unfolds almost in real-time, and focuses on Cage's increasingly frantic police investigation after a high ranking government official is assassinated in full view of thousands of people. Everyone, from his security officer best-buddy (Gary Sinise), to a mysterious blonde woman he encounters just moments before the killing (Carla Gugino), and even one of the boxers (Stan Shaw) may be involved. As well as having an audacious way with a camera lens, De Palma has also gone down every conceivable alley when it comes to music, and has used composers as diverse as Pino Donaggio, Dave Grusin, Danny Elfman and Patrick Doyle to score his movies in the past. His choice for Snake Eyes is Japanese musician and actor Ryuichi Sakamoto who, rather than adopting the expected rock and pop style score, has instead has composed an overtly classical, rather highbrow score which completely stands at odds with the slightly retro tone and setting of the film but, bizarrely, suits it perfectly. As is usual for a De Palma film, the opening track is played solely for classical beauty, and the main theme - first heard in 'Snake Eyes (Short Version)' - hits the spot. It is an emotional-sounding, but rather poignant string elegy which undulates hypnotically in a style that Stravinsky has a lot to answer for. The theme is restated in a few of the other cues towards the end of the album, before getting a final, expanded performance in 'Snake Eyes (Long Version)'. Tracks such as 'Assassination', 'The Hunt' and the incredibly violent-sounding 'The Storm' present a series of loud, chaotic, Herrmannesque phrases for horns and strings, chopping and slashing with a savage dissonance that recalls the more famous parts of Psycho. To counterbalance this, tracks such as 'Julia's Story' and the incredibly heartfelt 'Crawling to Julia' feature elegiac, wandering violin lines which capture both the tragedy and mystery of the film's quieter moments. As well as sticking to traditional scoring methods, Sakamoto occasionally employs a few innovative touches, such as in the highly peculiar 'Tyler and Serena', an interesting track which reminds me of the disjointed noises you might hear when channel-skipping as you tune in a radio (it moves from wailing dissonance to a sax solo to a seedy-sounding string theme over the course of four minutes). However good Sakamoto's score is, though, my own favourite track on the album is 'Sin City', a wonderful rock ballad written and performed by Meredith Brooks, which plays over the movie's end credits. Most people have already left the theatre at this point, disgusted by the film's cop-out ending that replaced a huge special effects sequence deemed too costly by Paramount, and so never get the chance to hear this excellent song - which I feel is one of the best "Original Songs Written For A Motion Picture" of 1998.

Track Listing: Running Time: 47 minutes 51 seconds

Hollywood Records 162-155-2 (1998)

Music composed and conducted by Ryuichi Sakamoto. Orchestrations by Ryuichi Sakamoto, Kevin Townend and Yukikazu Suzuki. Edited by Nick Meyers. Mastered by Ted Jensen. Album produced by Ryuichi Sakamoto.


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These web pages were designed and maintained by Jonathan Broxton copyright 1999. All opinions and views expressed on these pages are my own and are in no way intended to reflect those of my employer, the Trent Institute for Health Services Research, or those of the University of Sheffield.