The film comes out April 21. It looks epic, though the reviews out of Toronto were dreadful. I'm expecting a huge, sweeping score from Yared, hopefully there will be an album:
However I remain slightly wary, because the links for mp3 and streaming take you to the pages for Yared's score from a couple of years ago for "A Promise" and not this film, "The Promise". I knew that would cause confusion. Sigh.
The download album is out now. The CD doesn't come out for a month, bewilderingly.
I saw the film on Friday. It's tough to give an opinion on it, because it's so well-intentioned, about such an important story that has been woefully underrepresented in cinema, aside from Atom Egoyan's ARARAT years ago. However the film just isn't very good. It's hokey and slow and will never be the TITANIC/DR ZHIVAGO mass audience hit romance they were clearly hoping it would be.
It's astonishing to see a $100 million independent production, and every cent is up on the screen, the sets and locations are stunning in scope, but the whole thing feels like a lesser 1960s epic.
Yared's score, at least, has a pretty main theme, which repeats frequently. That's the benefit of this being an independent production, a studio would have instantly dumped this score as "old fashioned".
Beautifully written music, as we've come to expect from Yared. Some good variety of long arcing melodies, action oriented tense music and some exotic instrument solos.
I saw the film on Friday. It's tough to give an opinion on it, because it's so well-intentioned, about such an important story that has been woefully underrepresented in cinema, aside from Atom Egoyan's ARARAT years ago. However the film just isn't very good. It's hokey and slow and will never be the TITANIC/DR ZHIVAGO mass audience hit romance they were clearly hoping it would be.
Considering the movie made $4 million its opening weekend, this is a major understatement.
The CD finally came out on Friday. Gorgeous score, with a haunting main love theme. Everyone should pick this CD up to support the kind of orchestral scores we complain never happen anymore.
Nice score, but not very epic. I do hope that Yared has not been put off by the Troy disaster, not that this film is anywhere in the scope of that, but he is such a good orchestral composer that we need to hear more of his bombastic work!
Everyone should pick this CD up to support the kind of orchestral scores we complain never happen anymore.
I'm torn because I fully agree with this sentiment and yet for me the score failed to live up to its, ahem, promise. All the elements are there; Yared's typically long melodic lines, lots of gorgeous orchestral touches, all the trappings of Important Drama. But it never builds a head of steam. It just ambles along at various volumes: Quiet Drama, Slightly Louder Drama, Slightly-Less Louder Drama, Slightly More Quiet Drama. I wanted to love it but in the end it left me unmoved.
Now, that could be a sign that my heart is truly cold and dead. Or, it could be that Yared had trouble drawing inspiration from a movie that, much like the score, meant well but isn't very good. I expected this score to be a lot of things, but boring wasn't one of them.
All of that said, I intend to give it a few more listens to see if it catches me at the right wavelength.
