Rock 'n' Ronin

By Doug Adams

How Ronin ever got made in today's climate of heavy-handed potboilers is beyond me. Here we have a film without any real sort of moral center (I suppose one could argue that there was a strong theme of loyalty), without any palpable plot goal other than spy-versus-spy, without any clear motives or backstories. It's the anti-90's action flick--a collection of all the genre elements 90's thrillers have jettisoned in deference of anything that blows up real good. Sure, Ronin is just as cliched as anything made today, but at least it used out-of-vogue.

Going in to Ronin, I have to admit I was ready to add it to the list of films Jerry Goldsmith should have scored. The plot seemed right up Goldsmith's alley, so I was disappointed when the project was dropped from his roster. However, by some happy stroke of luck, Ronin landed in the hands of Elia Cmiral. And although Cmiral took a far different path with this score than Goldsmith probably would have, the result is one of this Fall's more interesting film scores.

Why do I say that Cmiral took a different path than Goldsmith? After all, some of the most clever touches could and probably would have been provided by either composer. Notice how the music--which usually acts as the arbiter of morality in films like this--never takes anyone's side. Cmiral's main theme provides a storytelling ambience, but it's non-specific about its internal implications. Then, once the story of the film really kicks in, the score becomes the last cog in the forward drive, pushing the film one step further than pure camera work and editing can go. That's really all it does... and, conceptually, that's all it needs to do.

The beauty of the storytelling in Ronin is that it's so stripped down it begins to circle around and become complicated again. Frankenheimer goes out of his way to deal almost exclusively with moods and chases, but he layers this on top of such a sticky/sketchy plot that our attention is drawn through the viscera and into the machinations. The last thing he needed was a score that ladled on the exposition. I think it was purposely absent in order to draw our attention. But, again, Goldsmith could and would have done all this too. However, I don't think Goldsmith would have used the musical style that is so prevalent in Cmiral's score: rock-oriented rhythm tracks.

Uh-oh, I said the R-word. It's strange how often eyes roll and noses turn up when rock music is mentioned. A couple of years ago, I did an article about Eric Serra's score for The 5th Element in which I praised it for embracing a techno/dance-beat style for this kind of film. You should have seen the mail that generated! I was amazed at how many people wrote in to say that dance music and techno beats were musical degenerates and that no serious score worth its salt would ever try to incorporate these styles. (Somehow Zimmer and his cronies escape this prejudice, possibly because of the predominate Teutonic nature of so much of their work.)

Why do people so hate rock in their film scores? For that matter, why do so many people hate jazz in their film scores? My guess is that it's because rock and jazz are associated with recent cultural phenomena. Classical and modernistic music are so non-mainstream that we associate them with either no cultural group at all, or with a sort of non-specific cultural importance. Art (and films in particular) is often escapist by nature. As such, any element of art which reminds us of current day reality--or worse yet, a social group that we reject, or that rejects us--is seen as anti-escapist, and an unwillingly grounded audience is an unhappy audience. (I'm, of course, excepting "socially conscious"' art here.) Place an electric guitar in a fantasy film and you're sure to hear people balking that it's historically inappropriate. Well, so are pedal tuned timpani, however they don't remind us of anything from our everyday lives. That's an extreme example, and certainly there are times when any instrument may be uncalled for, but the point is that we need to untie musical styles from the social climates in which they originated. Or, at least we need to understand them on both fronts.

Why was David Arnold's score to Tomorrow Never Dies hailed by many as a return to "proper" Bond scoring? Simple, it made ample stylistic references to the 1960's classic Bond period. Why does the electric guitar solo in Elliot Goldenthal's "Fire, Water, Paper: A Vietnam Oratorio" work so well? It's another appropriate social reference, here in the vein of Jimi Hendrix. But we need to release these styles and instruments from serving only this kind of purpose. The 5th Element (which, incidentally, I'm not saying was a great score) made use of techno music not to emulate the sound or feel of a futuristic dance club, but because it was a sound that seemed to work well for the film. It was kinetic, it was hyper-detailed, it was multi-cultural. It was all the things the film wanted to be.

The same can be said about Cmiral's Ronin score. The rock elements in this score--the percussion instruments, the synths, the long-form rhythmic webs--were used because they fit the needs of the film. Again, they were kinetic, they didn't moralize or comment, they were required to play behind and cohere quick-cutting chase sequences, etc. The rock wasn't meant to remind us of some sort of weird Franco-trash night culture; it wasn't meant to say that these spies are cultural renegades just like rock musicians. It was simply an appropriate musical voice, and, hey, it worked!

I'm going out on a limb, but I would bet that ninety percent of us who say we hate rock really hate that which we associate with it: the disposable, flavor-of-the-day, God-is-in-the-idiocy, pop culture of the past five decades. I know that's the problem I used to have. But, just like Romantic music, dodecaphonic music, polkas, Kabuki theaters, and so on, rock is just another group of sounds. Composers have a desire, a right, and even a responsibility to explore new sounds. That's how music grows. Jerry Goldsmith probably wouldn't have scored Ronin with such a rock sound. And I wouldn't have faulted him if he hadn't. But, I'm glad that are composers like Elia Cmiral who will explore this style with a touch of grace and intelligence.

Here's an idea for you message board regulars: what are your top five scores that have used popular music elements in an intelligent way. Think along the lines of Escape From the Planet of the Apes, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, "Setting the Trap" from Home Alone, and so on.

Or if I just managed to annoy you, let me have it: Doug@filmscoremonthly.com