Paradise with a Lobotomy

(LA Confidential and more Nonesuch)

by Doug Adams

As was noted last week, for all its twists and turns and conspiracies on top of conspiracies, the plot to The Game was pretty much exactly was it seemed to be. One of the problems I had with the film was that it basically warns the audience that it's going to try to fool us, makes its attempt, then presumes to gloat about its success. But, ultimately there's no deception. They told us the trick before they performed it. If it's a true twisted plot you seek, then check out LA Confidential. Nothing in this film is what it seems to be. You've got to admire The Game's attempt to fool us even after we know the ground rules of the plot, but LA Confidential is much more successful with its old fashioned holding-back-key-pieces-of-the-plot style. Even the form of the film is designed to throw us off kilter. It presents a plot, seemingly resolves it, then slowly rewinds itself and begins all over. All this without fashionable post-Pulp Fiction timeline futzing. It's exactly the kind of Neo-noir crime drama that Mulholland Falls wanted desperately to be, but couldn't.

I also found Jerry Goldsmith's score to be a good bit more substantial than many of his recent efforts--Air Force One coming immediately to mind. It's not a revolutionary work for him, but it's a clever mobilization on many of his tried and true sonic effects. There are synth percussion loops, bi-tonal piano and xylophone jots, and a lot of his darkly mellifluous strings-in-octaves scoring. He spends most of his time underscoring the nail biting scenes, or fights, or when key pieces of evidence are introduced. Again it's not reinventing the wheel at all, but it does help keep the tone of the picture at a subdued boil most of the time. I think that the intent of the film was to create an old-fashioned detective film then tweak it into a harsher reality. So Goldsmith does nice job of letting things feel both organically moody and retro glamour movie-ish. The main theme of the score is particularly evocative, not so much the post-World War II period in real history, but of that period in movie history. It's a clever synthesis of legit and jazz which features a solo muted trumpet spelling out a minor, minor seventh chord before turning a bit more chromatic. Unfortunately, it evokes 1950s film scoring a little too well, as it seems like a less knotty reading of Leonard Bernstein's theme from On the Waterfront. I'm not crying foul here, Bernstein didn't invent the second inversion minor, minor seventh chord (G Bb C Eb), but it's now practically impossible to play this without recalling that score. I'll make no guesses as to whether or not a connection was intentional.

LA Confidential's most unusual spotting comes very near the end of the film, when the climactic act of the story occurs--and I'm going to give it away now, so skip to the next paragraph if you haven't seen it. Here Guy Pearce's prim and proper police lieutenant is deciding how to handle his corrupt captain (James Cromwell) as the reinforcements' cars begin to arrive. Should he shoot the captain, or go along with the rouse and reap the career benefits of silence? Goldsmith's music builds very slowly, as if it's collecting itself into a furious boil. Then, smack in the middle of a mounting phrase, the act occurs. The lieutenant shoots and kills his captain. The music doesn't actually crescendo to the shot--it's just begun its ascent when it's cut short by the gun. At first I thought that there must have been an ugly edit here at some point after the music dub. In retrospect, I think that the cue was dead on proper. If the music built directly towards the gunshot, it would have made the event a forgone conclusion. It's a simple cinematic equation: the music builds and something occurs - an event, a scene change, something. By building at such a slow pace, Goldsmith fools us into associating the music with the distant cars' approach. Then, when the shot rings out in the middle of a statement, we're truly surprised because the music pulls the convention rug out from under us. How great that Goldsmith can still rethink the same drama/music devices that he helped to develop decades before.

The only cue in the film that I genuinely didn't like was the final bit. As the victors drive off into the distance a pop-oriented tune in 7/8 time bubbles up, complete with gooey 1980s synth drums. It was fun to hear such a throwback style from Goldsmith, but it sounded like someone suddenly began channeling Innerspace. I suppose that when one's working on such a dark period score, it's hard to switch gears for a happy ending. I smell studio suits. All in all, Goldsmith doesn't break any new ground with this score, but if you're a fan of his more complex music, LA Confidential is pretty interesting. Think of it as a less excitable, heavier cousin to his masterful '60s and '70s scores.

Leonard Rosenman and Nonesuch

Last week we also began looking at the new series of film music recordings now out on Nonesuch. I really hope that people won't overlook the Rosenman CD just because his name isn't North and he isn't credited with sexily unfamiliar foreign pictures. John Adams' recordings of Rosenman's scores to East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause are both exemplary models of scores that can and should work away from the films that spawned them. How nice that concert composer/conductor Adams, though never a critic's darling himself, would choose to concentrate his efforts here. Fortunately, Adams has always been fairly open minded about these things--I can remember just a year or two ago he scheduled a few pieces by Frank Zappa to be performed at Symphony Hall in Chicago, not exactly a hotbed of musical liberalism. The London Sinfonietta's performances on this CD are uniformly accomplished. The players have a firm grasp on the proper balance of barefoot abandon and European refinement necessary to perform these works. Rosenman's music for these films spans the void between touch-feely sentimentalism and cerebral detail so smoothly that one may never even notice the dichotomy present in the works. Eden's beautiful main theme is a delicate and precise little gem, which makes the fact that Rosenman is able to weave the same fabric into the bumpier, yet related "Cal and Aron Visit Mother" cue even more impressive. Likewise, he's able to write Sax-based jazz that is both sunny and stormy for Rebel. John Adams's brief liner notes are surprisingly good (who knew he knew so much about films?) and Royal S. Brown's more substantial contributions are, as usual, very fine. More people should familiarize themselves with Rosenman's work, and this disc is a good starting place. Hopefully it's a harbinger of more Rosenman scores to come.

By the way, the title of this column is Australian writer Clive James' description of Los Angeles. It's not particularly relevant, except that it's the setting for LA Confidential, and I thought it was funny. I could have quoted Randy Newman, but that would have been too obvious.

Always happy to hear your thoughts. Doug@filmscoremonthly.com