Michael Kamen abandoned the project of The Avengers (1998) by time problems and not because the director Jeremiah Chechik rejected his music, that it is what were speculated in a begining. Months after composing the score of the action movie Lethal Weapon 4 (1998), Kamen would substitute Ennio Morricone in What Dreams May Come already in close dates to the premiere of the movie; so much close as the English composer only had six days to compose and orchestrate (cooperatively with Robert Elhai) the score. After that in 1994 he presented the impressive Overture for 350 musicians, that included a great symphonic orchestra, 200 Buddhist monks, 35 Japanese percussionists, a group of old Chinese musicians, The Chieftains and a rock band, and that inaugurated the Great Musical Experience sponsored by the UNESCO's World Project for the Development of the Culture, Kamen spend a year composing which will possible be his masterpiece, The Millenium Symphony, The New Moon In The Old Moon´s Orbs, a symphony that commemorates the arrival of the new millennium and that it will be presented at world level in January of the year 2000 under the baton of Leonard Slatkin conducting The National Philharmonic Orchestra. Perhaps this fact may have conditioned Kamen's musical approximation, that had shuffled several options, between them the composition of an obscure and avant-garde soundtrack, option that some considered the most succeeded, and that I do not share absolutely; in any case, the soundtrack of What Dreams May Come has turned out to be one of the most outstanding scores of the year, and one of the better creations of his author. What there is no doubt is that the film of Vincent Ward supposes a gift for any composer, since it is a musically very rich movie: a supernatural love history that breaks the barriers between Heaven and Hell, and that is developed in very beautiful fantasy landscapes as well as in dismal and obscure infernal passages, product of the magnificent and original production design of Eugenio Zanetti. Kamen's musical treatment is disentailed completely of pretentious manierisms, of complex answers as those which could have offered a Elliot Goldenthal or a experimental Christopher Young, or of a unnecessary but tempting effective baroquism (and that composers as John Debney, James Newton Howard or Hans Zimmer - and by extension his multiple acolytes- would have carried out), opting for a more than evident intermediate resolution: a symphonic score for great orchestra, widely tonal (unless the sections composed for the trip to the Hell) and polychromal, of exquisite classic cut and well cared orchestration, measure and configured advisedly according to the needs of the movie, without saturating the already in itself surcharged digital imagery of the film. The result of this election is similar to which would have obtained musicians as George Fenton, Bruce Broughton, or Thomas Newman. The idea of a athonal and avant-garde score results interesting, but it does not seem quite proper for a love history, in spite of the fact that is developed in part in the Avern; it is probable that Alex North or Leonard Rosenman -as some other- might have composed a soundtrack of these characteristics, but in any case would have must capitulate before the motor essence of the film. The history of What Dreams May Come is a love history, but with certain nuances; and are those nuances which carried Kamen's wife to suggest him the possibility of using an old song that he had composed cooperatively with Mark Snow in the times of the New York Rock And Roll Ensemble entitled Beside You, and that was perfect for the movie. So much is as soon as Kamen, seeing the analogies of its lyrics with the argumentational premise of the movie, decided to convert the song into the basic theme of the work, from which would be elaborated the melodic textures and the other themes and motives that would certify the work. But even though the basic function of his music is of intimate motivation, this also seeks the implication of the audience painting (the same as Annie does in the film) musically what is seen, tended to an evident spectacularity; this only occurs when Chris arrives to Heaven (Summerland, The Painted World) and when descends to Hell (In Hell). In the first case, Kamen makes use of all the orchestral palette to musically "colorize" that Dream's Land, employing the metals to give a pure beauty sensation, achieving moments of great intensity and emotion; in the second, the percussion and the metals are turned athonal and painful, creating a strong musical contrast. In fact, an excellent score that has one of the nicest main themes than I have heard in the last years and with a prodigious instrumental color than terminates a work already in and of itself stupendous. D.R.C.
/ LONDON 63985-78039-2 / 61'