Review: Swept from the Sea
by James Southall
It's been two years since John Barry's last album, and so I was almost
at breaking-point with anticipation when Swept from the Sea was
finally released. It seems like it'll be one of those films that we've
only ever heard of because of the music (like Last of the Dogmen, Cherry
2000 and everything by Cliff Eidelman except Star Trek VI).
Swept from the Sea is a micro-budget British film based on "Amy
Foster" by Joseph Conrad, starring Vincent Perez, Rachel Weisz, Kathy
Bates and Ian McKellen. It's received only a very limited release in the
US, and here in the UK I don't know whether it's going to get any sort
of release at all.
The music is just what you'd expect from John Barry: full of lust and
romance, with lovely lyrical themes, and all with a perfect musical structure.
It's quite similar in a lot of ways to his score for Roland Joffe's ill-advised
1995 version of The Scarlet Letter (not surprising, since that too
was a romantic period drama). But those who have criticised Swept from
the Sea as being just yet another reworking of the same idea by Barry
are mistaken.
There is much in this score that is as fresh as the Cornish scenery
in the film; for example, the ethnic tinges that accompany some of the
cues aren't like anything else by Barry that I can think of off-hand. The
themes are all very good--but then nobody can craft a great theme on such
a regular basis as John Barry. One in particular (from the dreadfully entitled
cue "Yanko asks Amy Out") is just about as beautiful as any piece
of music I can think of.
John Barry always constructs his music so well: without fail, every
last cue on this disc is perfectly formed, each with a definite beginning,
middle and ending. The scary thing is that Barry has done this with all
of his recent work; quite how he manages is beyond me. He somehow manages
to compose film music that doesn't give any hints that it is, in fact,
film music; it could just as easily be "pure" classical music.
I can't think of any other composer who has done this quite so regularly.
Of course, by necessity some films don't offer the composer quite the same
musical opportunities as John Barry usually gets, so it often isn't possible
for a composer to craft quite such well-rounded cues as these.
Somewhat strangely, there's a jig in the middle of the score that's
completely out-of-keeping with everything else. It's very well-composed
and recorded, and interestingly mixed, but interrupts the flow of the romantic
music in a most unfortunate manner. Perhaps it could have been stuck on
the end of the CD as some kind of "bonus track"; positioned where
it is, it detracts from the overall experience. In fact, at the end of
the disc is "To Love and Be Loved", a song with lyrics by Tim
Rice, sung by Corina Brouder (with whose work I am not familiar).
This is Barry's first song for quite a while, and the wait has been
worth it. Most songs for films these days are just shameless cash-ins that
have nothing to do with the rest of the score. John Barry is firmly of
the opinion, though, that if a song is written for the film, it should
be based around the themes from that film. In fact, it is for this reason
that he declined to score Tomorrow Never Dies. It is often stated
that the dispute was over money--but this is false. The producers simply
didn't want Barry to have any involvement at all with the title song, and
he refused to work under those conditions. It seems to me like the producers
knew nothing at all about the previous scores; just imagine Goldfinger
without the wonderful instrumental version of the theme cropping up throughout
the score!
(As an aside: David Arnold has written a separate song for Tomorrow
Never Dies, sung by kd lang, and to be heard over the end credits of
the film, and has incorporated this into his underscore. This will probably,
in years to come, be viewed as the definitive song from the film by fans,
rather than the Sheryl Crowe opening-title song. Another aside: the best
use of a song for a main title in recent years is Michael Kamen's "Have
You Ever Really Loved a Woman?" from Don Juan de Marco. He
obviously spent an awful lot of time and effort in creating it, and the
result is not only an outstanding song, but one based entirely around music
from the rest of the score. If you haven't already done so, be sure to
check it out.)
Barry employs some interesting writing for female voices at times; it's
somewhat creepy yet highly effective. When done correctly, a chorus is
the last piece in the jigsaw to make the music just right; this is one
of those occasions. While probably nobody would have even noticed if the
chorus hadn't been there, its use is that final ingredient to providing
the fullest flavour possible. It is a great pity that the Swept from
the Sea CD won't get the attention it so richly deserves, due as much
to people's prejudices against John Barry as to the relative obscurity
of the film. Now that the waiting is over for Swept from the Sea,
I'll just have to try to contain myself until Barry's next album, the non-soundtrack
tone poem The Beyondness of Things, due from Decca/PolyGram next
spring.
I class Swept from the Sea--by some considerable distance--as
the best new film score from a largely-poor year-to-date (and I don't include
Goldsmith's Air Force One or The Edge in that, and I've not
yet heard Seven Years in Tibet).
***
Note from LK: I'm a Barry fan and enjoyed this album, although I have
heard from at least one Barryphile who found it uninspired. Comments? Mailbag@filmscoremonthly.com
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