CD Review: King Kong
By David Coscina
King Kong ***
JAMES NEWTON HOWARD
Decca
21 tracks - 74:28
When it was announced that Howard Shore would be supplying the score
for Peter Jackson's version of King
Kong, a long time dream project of his, most film score fans
weren't surprised. The two had collaborated on one of the most
critically and commercially successful film trilogies in cinematic
history. Both director and composer have the Oscars to show for their
vision and hard work. Shore has long been known to begin on film
projects very early into production to immerse himself into the world
of the narrative and Kong was
no different. The composer began sketching out ideas in early 2005.
What came as a major surprise was the news that Shore's name wasn't
attached to the project any longer mere weeks before the release of the
film. Rumors circulated throughout the industry as to why. Needless to
say, considering the amount of music that needed to be composed and
recorded, the task for the replacement composer was daunting to say the
least. Enter James Newton Howard. Longtime workhorse composer and fan
favorite, Howard (James Newton, not Shore) came in at the 11th hour and
was expected to produce a Wagnerian length score that would inject the
right amount of excitement, pathos and emotion into the film. Let's
remember that Howard isn't a stranger to tight deadlines and
last-minute replacement score assignments. Scores to Falling Down (1993) and Waterworld (1995) are two notable
examples that yielded some truly great results. But the former was
comprised largely of textural, modernist writing with a sparing running
time. The latter had wall-to-wall music and encompassed a breadth of
styles including a cogent Korngoldian adventure theme, pulse-pounding
action cues, and some New Age electronic work for the more placid
moments.
But Kong is a different beast
altogether, and one of the many questions that has arisen around
Howard's effort is whether a score written in four weeks is comparable
in quality and effectiveness to music written over the course of five
months (as was the case for Shore). In the KongIsKing.net website diary,
James Newton Howard exclaimed "I'm having a ball," although the reports
from various music editors, conductors, arrangers, suggested that the
time line was a little insane and left much of the crew bereft of sleep.
So how does King Kong sound?
Well, it's James Newton Howard in fast-forward mode. Time does play a
factor in large scale orchestral compositions and while the music in
this score has plenty of bombast, emotion and excitement, it sounds
like patchwork in places. Being a very big James Newton Howard fan
works against this listener because there are so many quotes or
evocations from other scores, most notably the aforementioned Waterworld (big action cues),
emotive string work from Unbreakable,
odd meter changes The Fugitive,
a flute line from Hildago,
and brass writing from Dinosaur.
But probably the most puzzling aspect of Howard's score is the
penultimate track "Beauty Killed the Beast IV" that features a flat
IV-i progression for strings in unison with horns and mixed chorus that
sounds a little too much like Shore's "Prophecy" cue from Lord of the Rings. This is most
distressing since it was reported that Shore's dismissal was due to
differing musical ideologies with Jackson. If that was the case, why
have Howard replicate Shore's sound for the most important scene in the
film? In addition, the boy falsetto accompanying the big climax smacks
of Shore's style as opposed to James Newton Howard's.
The other problem I have with the overall sound of Howard's Kong, is that Howard's style is
very contemporary sounding. His harmonic framework is rooted in a
late-20th century pop/jazz/film score idiom and this rails against the
setting of the narrative. The "Heroic Kong Theme" as I call it has got
more than just a misplaced sense of character. It's basically an
ascending harmonic minor scale that's been fleshed out with triadic
chords. It's very heroic sounding but has the quality of a modern
superhero rather than a primordial 25 foot gorilla.
John Barry's 1976 score sounded like the '70s because it was set in
that decade, but even he knew that he had to imbue Kong with a sense of portent and
thus chose a bi-tonal horn chord to underscore his ferocity. Howard's
music take on Kong is
sympathetic and rather benign, much like Williams' benevolent Jurassic Park string theme. The
problem is, when you see Kong messily dispose a trio of T-Rexes with
his bare hands and revel in it by pounding his chest, or else killing
sacrificial offerings from the indigenous island populace, it's a
little hard to swallow that he's on par with E.T..
The "tragic theme," a longer line that features a root-minor
3rd-root-octave motif as its primary figure, is subject to much better
development and re-capitulation, especially when it's played by celli
at the beginning of the track "The Empire State Building." This theme
captures the essence of what has made Kong
the iconic film figure he is -- a misunderstood beast who is ultimately
doomed because of the nature of his being. There's a brass statement of
this intermingled with the heroic theme amidst some violent and frankly
overly noisy action music on "Tooth and Claw." Juxtaposing the two
themes in this track serves to further create a cognitive dissonance
between the effectiveness of the two themes. The tragic theme works,
the heroic one doesn't.
Most of the action cues in King Kong
suffer from this same fate. The ubiquitous horn trills, and other
ornaments along with endless sequencing (not MIDI computer programs,
the technique of modulating a short phrase through different keys
thereby creating tension or excitement) all capture the physical
action, the immediacy of the moment, but don't really embellish upon Kong's character or narrative.
Then there are tracks that contain humor, is as the case with "That's
All there Is," which approaches Gershwin styled jazz complete with a
Micky Mouse scoring ideology. In the film it might be effective but it
sounds contrived as a pure listening experience. The jazz in of itself
is not the problem though; it's more the approach toward the narrative.
But this knee-jerk style scoring is what accompanies a composer who's
throwing everything but the kitchen sink into the mix to meet a crazy
deadline.
The most effective and satisfying music material on the soundtrack can
be found in the placid tracks featuring a plaintive string theme,
something Howard excels at writing. First heard on "Beautiful" this
theme runs through strings and piano, symbolizing the bond between Kong
and Ann. Both are lonely, almost disenfranchised beings who don't quite
fit into their world. The scene in which this cue accompanies is quite
poetic, as Kong takes Ann to his mountain-top solitude to simply watch
the world around him from afar. It is this point where the two
transcend their species and connect as beings in their loneliness.
Because this is an allegorical moment, the music doesn't have to sound
of the time as it too transcends its bonds or obligations towards
period continuity. This theme is re-counted on "Central Park" where
Kong and Ann are re-united with slight variations lending a sense of
cohesion and dramatic build.
There are a couple other notable themes, such as the alternating
four-note "skull island theme" and the descending major scale (perhaps
Howard thought, "hey the ascending harmonic minor scale worked, let's
use a retrograde version of it"), which lends a sense of finality to
the story arc.
In the end, after listening to this score several times, I can honestly
say that, given the tone of the film, the period of the narrative, and
general atmosphere, then weighing the compositional styles of Howard
Shore against James Newton Howard, along with the time each took to
work on their respective versions, Peter Jackson's Kong would have been better served
by sticking with Shore's music.
James Newton Howard is a solid composer who's proven he can write
beautiful, powerful music, but even someone like John Williams would
have likely passed on this offer because of the lack of time to
effectively write a score befitting of this film icon. Also, Howard
Shore's stylistic sensibilities seem better suited to this project as
he's demonstrated the ability to effectively mirror a plethora of time
settings as heard in The Aviator, Ed
Wood, Looking for Richard and of course The Lord of the Rings. James Newton
Howard's style is just not the right fit for this project in this
listener's humble opinion. Obviously opinions vary, but the disparity
in all the factors mentioned results in the difference between a modern
classic score and one that is a awkward fit with its film as well as a
slightly schizoid listening experience.
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