Although the Zimmer of this The Thin Red Line is a Zimmer evidently committed with Malick's movie, it is not less certain than it is also a Zimmer lacking inspiration and resolved, therefore, in inviting us to listen one of the chanciest musical trifles in the recent history. Don't be mistaken with the quality of the film neither for the musical ideas that it can suggest a priori the story that is narrated: although the score causes in this musician's followers higher and more transcendent readings that those that here I propose, the Zimmer of The Thin Red Line it is nothing but a too ambitious but definitively not very lucid composer that bases on the lineal monotony of the strings of minimalists aspirations such a complex musical cement as languid, recycling electronic sounds and introducing dispersed oriental elements that are very far from reaching a musical coherence that is able to propose an interesting audition. The ethnic and cultural conflict that Malick proposes in its movie is poorly cultured in the music of Zimmer: minuscule references to the Japanese people and the native tribes are reflected in the dispersed sound of a complaining shakuhachi, in a traditional song or in the solo of a harp, what creates an enormous musical confusion. Although perhaps this has been in fact the objective of Zimmer -to create confusion through these sporadic and inadvertent sound incursions of the ethnic material (in clearing contrasts with the symphonic element and defining this way the chaos of the war)- the final product is very far from being considered interesting. Dressed up of electronic colors and of poor orchestral textures, The Thin Red Line it is nothing but a pretentious mystic cabal that will probably be able to coax the hooked fans to the religious elixir that more and more often proposes the Zimmer factory. D.R.C.

/ RCA VICTOR 09026-63382 / 59'

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