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| CD Reviews: Ripley's Game and Love Object |
| Posted By: Luke Goljan, Cary Wong on September 5, 2004 - 10:00 PM |
CD Reviews: Ripley's Game and Love Object
Ripley's Game ***
ENNIO MORRICONE
Warner Chappell Music Italiana 256460072-2
13 tracks - 46:50
Liliana Cavani's adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's third Tom Ripley
novel, Ripley's Game will
probably go down as 2004's lost movie. While it played everywhere else
in 2003, even on a US cable station, it finally received a commercial
run at a small theater in New York in early 2004 where it garnered good
buzz. But it was too little too late. The movie is now on DVD for
everyone else to judge for themselves.
In this updated version, John Malkovich plays the elusive and
mysterious Ripley who has taken himself out of the murder/con games of
his youth, but is pulled back in when a harmless revenge game he plays
on his neighbor (Dougray Scott) turns to murder. In direct opposite to
Matt Damon's misunderstood gay Ripley in Anthony Mingella's underrated The Talented Mr. Ripley, Malkovich
oozes slime and is squarely in heterosexual mode here. At first, I was
put off by Malkovich, who seems to be playing a variation of his
Valmont character from Dangerous
Liaisons, but he soon makes us care for this Ripley. The movie
becomes an enjoyable thriller, made more so by veteran composer Ennio
Morricone's scoring.
Morricone's triumph here is the wonderful concert piece that Ripley's
girlfriend plays on her pianoforte. It is played to shocking effect
since most of the other music in the score is of the brooding and
menacing variety expected in a film like this. But "In Concerto" is a
light, melodic piece that represents the crime-free world Ripley loves.
The cue plays during the last scene of the movie, as well as the end
titles.
Morricone scores the rest of the picture as if he's scoring Mission: Impossible, which is fine
in the movie, but less engaging on this import CD from Italy. Even the
romantic selections are menacing. My two favorite pieces are "Primo
Treno" and "Secondo Treno," the two set pieces involving Ripley's
neighbor in Germany. Morricone infuses these cues with tension created
mostly by an almost saw-like sound from the orchestra, reminiscent of
his score for Mission to Mars.
The Horner-esque 13-minute cue, "Collage Per Ripley," is the last one
on the CD, and is the film's cat-and-mouse final showdown. Considering
its length, the music doesn't generate much suspense or much sympathy
for the characters.
Still, there's a lot to enjoy on this CD, and in the movie as well.
Despite minimal variation in mood, this score will likely please
Morricone fans. -- Cary Wong
Love Object ***
NICHOLAS PIKE
Nicpik 49409-2
37 tracks - 56:02
A bizarre cross-pollenation of melody and sound design, Love Object achieves exactly the
right creepy mood that a film about a jealous sex doll deserves. At
times reminiscent of Marco Beltrami's The
Minus Man (particularly in its use of glass harmonica and
percussion), occasionally recalling Elliot Goldenthal's Michael Collins theme, and in other
places sounding for all the world like Peter Dasent's Heavenly Creatures and Dead Alive, Pike's music echoes a
strange mixture of both melancholy and fright. Though the sound design
elements can be a bit grating, the small-scale production seems a
welcome change for Pike, who does a much better job here with an
intimate, Christopher Young-styled score than he usually does with a
larger orchestra, even if the strings occasionally sound fake (which is
a cruel irony, since I don't believe they are).
The real downfall of the score comes toward the end of the album, when
it degenerates into a barrage of noise. Pike scores the horror with
horrifying music, and while this works splendidly on screen, it's
rather hard to justify listening to shrieking violins, a dentist-drill
sounding effect (actually a cello) and loud jolting stingers on CD,
especially when it goes on for several minutes straight. Tracks like
"Unpacking" and "Office Dating" help make the album a worthwhile
listen, but for everything pretty, there's something equally ugly and
obnoxious. This lack of judicious editing makes for an album that gets
tiresome far sooner than it needed to. The 56:02 running time seems to
reflect a "complete" release of a score that would have been better
served by one of 30 minutes.
Pikes hopes that this score will prove to be more interesting than
traditional, larger fare are fulfilled -- this album does show that the
composer has genuine talent that doesn't always get to shine through in
his other more run of the mill projects. Here's hoping that his next
project yields even better results. -- Luke
Goljan
MailBag@filmscoremonthly.com
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Today in Film Score History:
December 5 |
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| Cliff Eidelman born (1964) |
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| Dave Brubeck died (2012) |
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| Jerry Goldsmith begins recording his score to Coma (1977) |
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| Jerry Goldsmith records his score for the Room 222 pilot (1968) |
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| John Altman born (1949) |
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| Johnny Pate born (1923) |
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| Karl-Ernst Sasse born (1923) |
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| Manuel De Sica died (2014) |
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| Masaru Sato died (1999) |
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| Osvaldo Golijov born (1960) |
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| Richard Gibbs born (1955) |
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| Ron Jones records his score for the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Outrageous Okona" (1988) |
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