CD Review: Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
By Jeff Bond
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the
Sith ****
JOHN WILLIAMS
Sony Classical SK 94220
15 tracks - 70:51
There are two kinds of film score enthusiasts in my book: fans who
require scores to transcend the movies for which they were written and
become, essentially, self-contained pop or concert works, and fans who
enjoy the time-honored conventions of traditional underscoring. John
Williams' most successful Star Wars
scores have satisfied both camps: 1977's original Star Wars revived the art of
classical Hollywood film scoring in ways that are still being felt
today. But at the same time it and The
Empire Strikes Back created pop artifacts (Luke's and Obi-Wan's
[or The Force's] themes, the Imperial March) that had a life of their
own. Arguably, that achievement is unique to Episodes IV and V. While
fans know them, you don't see the public at large humming (or other
movies and TV shows quoting) the Ewok theme, Luke and Leia, Duel of the
Fates or Across the Stars, however well-composed those tunes might have
been.
Fans of great underscoring will love Williams' Revenge of the Sith score, a work
of many magnificent moments but, it must be said, no standout melodies
anyone but us soundtrack nerds will be whistling 20 years hence. That's
understandable given the film's story. This is, after all, the first
PG-13-rated Star Wars film
and its storyline, about the ultimate moral downfall of Anakin
Skywalker and the fall of the Republic, is a downer. The score is
loaded with action and epic flourishes but unlike all its predecessors
there are no self-contained "fun" set pieces -- no TIE Fighter Attacks,
no Asteroid Fields, no Gungun escapades or hotrod chases through
Coruscant -- only tragedy and sorrow. The score's centerpiece is
"Battle of the Heroes," a hair-raising and superior flip side to the
showy but ultimately meaningless "Duel of the Fates." "Battle of the
Heroes" (reprised and further developed in "Anakin vs. Obi-Wan" --
raising the question of whether the first is a concert arrangement or
part one of a cue continued in "A. vs. O.") is deceptively simple but
also gorgeously tragic -- perfect music to underscore the saga's two
most pivotal characters engaging in the fight that will essentially
destroy both their lives and an entire civilization.
Without the showpieces of some of the other scores, Sith is best experienced as one
long listen, but every cue has something to offer -- the kinetic,
William Walton-like post-anthem battle music, the fateful sweep of
"Anakin's Betrayal," "Anakin's Dark Deeds" and "Enter Lord Vader," the
deeply mournful "Immolation Scene" and "Padme's Destiny," even the
static, textural "Palpatine's Teachings" that musically suggests the
moral void at the heart of the Dark Side of the Force. Probably the
closest the score comes to a standalone action cue is "General
Grievous," an impressively sustained attack of odd-metered, overlapping
brass lines. Like much of the more kinetic action material in the score
it shows Williams making a game attempt to keep up with visual effects
that have long since become too dense and rapidly-edited for any
traditional composer to make sense of, a dilemma Williams faced early
on in the spaceship-loaded Return of
the Jedi. Sith is
probably closest in spirit to Jedi
(Jedi introduced choral music
to the trilogy and Sith is
the most choir-heavy score of the six), but happily without that
score's Ewok shenanigans.
Listening to The Phantom Menace,
it felt like there wasn't a lot for Williams to sink his teeth into;
with Attack of the Clones he
seemed to make the conscious decision to write music that would drive
the film forward whether it personally engaged him or not. With Revenge of the Sith you get the
sense that Williams actually felt something and responded emotionally
to the movie, not with the preplanned packaging of Phantom Menace and Clones. If there's a downside to
the album it's in the 12-minute end title sequence that's composed
almost entirely of leftovers from Williams' 1977 Star Wars concert arrangements.
This is something that sounds like one of Jerry Goldsmith's Star Trek movie end title
patchworks, an incongruously buoyant pomp-and-circumstance afterthought
-- or perhaps Williams having his own personal celebration that his
quarter-century assignment is finally over.
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