Scoring the Scores: The Oscar Contenders
By JIM FUSILLI This year's Oscar nominees for original score give Academy Award voters a chance to avoid the controversy that colored the results in the category in the past two years. The nominees are Alexandre Desplat for "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"; Danny Elfman for "Milk"; James Newton Howard for "Defiance"; Thomas Newman for "WALL-E"; and A.R. Rahman for "Slumdog Millionaire." Their scores seem to be entirely original works -- in the two instances where "Slumdog Millionaire" uses previously existing music similar to what Mr. Rahman created, that is clearly stated in the end credits. Other previously existing songs that appear in the five films stand apart from the composers' efforts, which should allow voters to focus on the score. No worthy score was ruled ineligible based on a technicality -- though Han Zimmer and Mr. Howard's score for "The Dark Knight" was initially disqualified because three other artists' names were listed as contributors. But it was reinstated for consideration. (All the nominated scores are available on CD and for downloading at iTunes and Amazon.com.) Oscar voters haven't always had such clear direction from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Last year, for example, Jonny Greenwood's score for "There Will Be Blood" was ruled ineligible because it contained material he had composed for another work as well as excerpts from compositions by Brahms and Arvo Pärt. But in the previous year, Gustavo Santaolalla's Oscar-winning score for "Babel" contained at least three prominent pieces that appeared in earlier films and on albums -- Mr. Santaolalla's "Iguazu" (which was in "The Insider," Michael Mann's 1999 film, and on Mr. Santaolalla's 1998 album "Ronroco") and two compositions by Ryuichi Sakamoto (which appeared on his albums). Hearing them in the context of the film, some voters, it may be safe to assume, thought they were part of the original score. This year, voters will have to decide whether to recognize music that's most memorable as catchy pop or symphonic music that illuminates story and character. Mr. Rahman's ebullient work for "Slumdog Millionaire," a film about a poor boy who may win a fortune on a game show, is likely the early favorite -- last week, I stopped in a theater in Boston to see it again and members of the audience cheered when his name appeared in the end credits. That may not be what a film-score composer is looking for. As Mr. Elfman told me last week, "If I'm going for any reaction, the best I could possibly hope for is that they see my name and go, 'Oh really?' Writing a score that gets people to jump out of the chairs is a whole other ballgame." "What we do isn't measurable," Mr. Newman said, "if it's in the service of something else." On these pages, Mr. Rahman spoke of director Danny Boyle's request for "throbbing and edgy and pulsating" music. He delivered, blending attention-stealing hip-hop, electronica, Bollywood pop and Indian ragas. "Jai Ho," the theater-rocking end-credits finale, does for "Slumdog" what "Burn It Blue" did for "Frida": It encapsulates the film experience in a song that lingers with the audience as it leaves the theater. Elliot Goldenthal's "Frida" score won the Oscar in 2003. For "Benjamin Button," Mr. Desplat wrote music to accompany a contemporary fable of a man who ages in reverse and, accordingly, grows apart from loved ones. As I wrote last month, Mr. Desplat told me when I met him in Los Angeles, "It's not easy to tell the story of a whole man and still create sympathy." At times, his score evokes early Ellington, but much of the music is discreet and seemingly simple. Yet, like Mr. Button himself, it is anything but. His themes for the two main characters merge flawlessly in a haunting, bittersweet piece for solo piano. Mr. Elfman's score for "Milk" couches in heroic terms its protagonist, the slain gay-rights activist and San Francisco city supervisor Harvey Milk. His themes are tenderly and persistently assertive, and triumphs are supported with muted tones. Mr. Elfman's three-minute suite that accompanies Milk's last day is devastating. "I probably started in two or three different directions," Mr. Elfman said, "but I kept coming back to Americana. It's an American story -- a man who finds himself late in life becoming a hero." In Mr. Howard's "Defiance" score, violinist Joshua Bell provides solos in a work that's deeply affecting and sentimental yet never maudlin as it supports the story of a group of Jews who take refuge from the Nazis in a forest in Belorussia. Mr. Howard, who composed the violin solos, said Mr. Bell gave them emotional heft beyond what was on the page, conveying tension and tenderness. One stirring piece accompanies both a wedding scene in the forest and a simultaneous ambush by the partisans against the Nazis. The orchestra grows in volume as suspense mounts. "There's a great deal at stake in both scenarios," Mr. Howard told me last week. "The connection is the humanity -- a beginning and, potentially, the end. These are high points of drama. The violin gives it a very personal kind of voice, but the rest of the orchestra contextualizes it." And then there's Mr. Newman's music for "WALL-E," the saga of a trash-compacting robot left behind, centuries earlier, on Earth who falls in love with a fellow automaton he tries to rescue on a human colony in deep space. It's a film that's both charming and wise, as is Mr. Newman's music, which often articulates the point of view of WALL-E, who is guileless, purposeful and irony-free. The score ranges from music of Straussian power -- a homage to the soundtrack of Stanley Kubrick's "2001" -- to quietly delightful pieces that express WALL-E's sense of wonder. "He's beyond cynicism, which is a refreshing point of view," Mr. Newman said when we spoke last week. "He has an ability to see things in a simple way." The music, he added, "fills us with hope, even when an innocent love faces a dire predicament." Perhaps it's unfair to see Mr. Rahman's music as merely high-energy Bollywood-style pop; he's written effective cues for the film that heighten suspense and articulate character. If the other four scores are too subtle, Oscar voters are likely to choose the music of "Slumdog Millionaire," though it's better as a pop album than a film score. Mr. Fusilli is the Journal's rock and pop music critic. Email him at [email protected]. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123310214254822087.html
