plorentz's Full Review: A History of Violence by Original Soundtrack
An alumnus of the early 70's prog-rock band Lighthouse and a former Saturday Night Live band leader, composer Howard Shore's approach to scoring isn't so much to impose a soundtrack on a movie, but rather to find the score's themes and sounds from within the story and the characters themselves. Unlike, say, John Williams, who delivers grand, iconic themes that could be almost be transferred from one action film to another (which makes him a favorite of both the public and parodists), Howard Shore's approach (even for comedies like Big and Mrs. Doubtfire) is almost psychoanalytical. In his liner notes to the score of his latest film, A History of Violence, director David Cronenberg (whose collaboration with Shore is rivaled only by Tim Burton and Danny Elfman for sheer longevity) describes Shore as an actor. I'd add that he's a method actor - someone who builds a character by living in his skin.
And yet, as evidenced by his score for A History of Violence, his 11th score for Cronenberg in more than 25 years, Shore's music is thoroughly engaging on its own, and accessible enough to survive without the images it breathes three-dimensional life into. Over the brooding, tectonic shifting of strings, he plays with notions of scale and distance - spatial, emotional, and (particularly important to the film's story) temporal - by playing French horns against flutes and oboes on simple, almost elemental melodies. In "Tom", the horns suggest the bigness (and the far-off-ness) of a memory with a melody that sounds like a fox hunter's call, but the theme is repeated, in more "present" tones by an oboe; and as the theme recurs later in pieces like "Hero", the melody acquires some questioning, nervous variations. The effect is something like hearing someone struggle not to be swallowed by his own dark shadow (which is, in essence, what the movie is about).
As intimate and internalized as much of the music feels, Shore's orchestrations lend the proceedings a monumental scale. In the chase scene "Run", the snare drums which propel the melody sound like they're coming from behind a wall, and the strings themselves become the percussion - the melody ultimately disappearing leaving nothing but sheer animal pursuit. Elsewhere, timpanis rumble like thunder heard from ten miles away - muted, but earthshaking nonetheless. In "Hero", the strings pile on top of each other with suffocating dissonance and volume. "The Staircase" introduces the score's most memorable melody (reprised in "The Return"), a heaving and swelling of strings that feels like breath, alternated with a cautious flute, like a whispered incantation.
There is a brooding bleakness to the score, and aside from "Run", it's uniformly slow. But repeated listenings reveal an uncommonly thoughtful depth of emotion, and lots of furtive movement even in areas where little appears to be happening on the surface. It's lovely, nerve-racking stuff.
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BECAUSE YOU NEED TO KNOW:
"A History of Violence" Original Score
Music Composed, Orchestrated, and Conducted by Howard Shore
New Line Records
Released 10/11/2005
Produced by Howard Shore
40 min.
SONGS: Motel - Tom - Cheerleader - Diner - Hero - Run - Violence - Porch - Alone - The Staircase - The Road - Nice Gate - The Return - Ending
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