Michael KAMEN
X-Men
OST
DECCA 467 270-2
[40:25]
Crotchet
Amazon
US
The X-Men continues the summer blockbusters with what looks like another
surprisingly good film, coming as it does from Bryan Singer, director of
The Usual Suspects and the tremendously under-rated Apt Pupil.
It is a film which has taken all the pundits by surprise, being supposedly
too dark for more than cult success, yet opening in America with a staggering
$57m over it's first three days. Michael Kamen's musical score is certainly
dark, showing very little sign of commercial friendliness. It sounds like
pure film music, in that it may brilliantly enhance the dark drama on-screen,
but makes for a tough listen.
The album opens with 'Death Camp', a sober piano arpeggio recalling John
Ottman's score for The Usual Suspects, before giving way to intense
string textures which call to mind Barber's Adagio for Strings. However,
the track quickly builds to a corrosively powerful orchestral peak in a territory
someplace between Jerry Goldsmith's The Boys From Brazil and John
Williams The Fury, the former of course dealing with fascism and genetic
experimentation, the latter with super-powered mutants. Both applicable
references for this adaptation of Marvel's long-running comic-book saga.
The tracks which follow - there are 12 in total - mix savagely ironclad action,
occasionally augmented with brutal technoesque electronics, and minimal,
stark atmospheres. Wordless sampled female voices are used in a restrained
fashion, while a track such as 'Mutant School' offers a fatalistic enchanted
glitter akin to Ottman's fine Incognito score. As matters progress,
through touches of neo-classical string writing in 'Magneto's Lair' to the
tortured violin writing and apparent serial techniques of 'Museum Fight'
(thing of Goldsmith's Coma) perseverance is rewarded. This is a score
which goes 'bang' and 'crash', but it does so in a controlled, precise way
which is dramatically powerful. You will search in vein for a memorable tune,
it is the perfect album for clearing the house of guests who have overstayed
their welcome, though the finale, 'Logan and Rogue' does offer some
shadow-inflected romance.
An album which many will find hard to love, and which many will dismiss out
of hand as unlistenable, for those able to appreciate classy thriller / horror
scores there are pleasures here. It does not appear on the evidence of the
album to be a great score, or even an outstanding one, but it has every chance
of being most effective in the film, and that when all is said and done is
the primary purpose of movie music.
Reviewer
Gary S. Dalkin
Marc Bridle adds:-
Michael Kamen has written some notable scores - among them the action movie
soundtracks for Die Hard and Die Hard 2 (the most memorable music not being
Kamen's action-bound rollercoaster at all, but Sibelius' Finlandia),
and the romantic drama, Mr Holland's Opus, for which Kamen wrote the Richard
Dreyfuss composer's oh-so-American symphony. X-MEN does not necessarily depart
from the substance of these previous big hitters, but it sounds to me amongst
his most derivative film scores.
The music opens wonderfully for the Death Camp scene - Hitchcockian piano
threads lead to a memorable theme on lower strings which is as dark as anything
Shostakovich wrote. From 2'07 to 2'28 the music is genuinely catastrophic,
unsparing in the picture it draws of unrelieved horror. As it moves on, however,
through the Ambush (with its eery harmonics) the sense of invention falls
off and the music sounds as if it has sprung from the pages of Independence
Day (2'49 to 3'22 - track 2). The haunting opening to the Magneto's Lair
(on what sounds like violin strings being played beyond the instrument's
bridge) leads onto another of those dark-rimmed passages on cellos and basses.
Train (track 6) begins on a fugato which gathers momentum and develops into
a schizoid, Psycho-like melody on strings but doesn't go any further.
The Museum Fight (track 9) finds Kamen somewhere near his best. Lower strings
are carefully used as a dynamic contrast to the high tessitura writing for
the violins and there is an added dissonance to his writing here which belies
a considerable debt to Stravinsky. The Final Showdown is again derivative
of the conclusion to Independence Day - which is a bit of a pity. The final
track takes us full circle by ending on the same solo piano which opens the
film.
There were times when Kamen almost came close in this score to equalling
his achievement in his unsurpassed music to Stephen King's The Dead Zone
(a much under-rated film). In the end, it is only partly a triumph, and he
does not always succeed in mixing classical and rock idioms. They often seem
juxtaposed very uncomfortably. One feels he used all of his creative energy
for the extraordinary opening track. Elsewhere, the inspiration is very
under-developed.
Reviewer
Marc Bridle
