The last time that Clint Mansell did the score for a Darren Aronofsky film, we ended with the Requiem For A Dream soundtrack, an incredibly powerful and moody theme that has since been recycled and used in over five million ways, from pulling soundtrack duties in one of the Lord Of The Rings movies to a commercial for epic diaper rash (eventually, mark my words). This time around, Mansell generates something more conventional, but almost just as brilliant — it has less moments of raw power and emotion than Requiem, but it’s also more balanced and consistent.
 
The shame here, though, is the album’s paltry length. With only ten tracks — half of which don’t even break the four minute barrier — the theme is left criminally under-explored. If the soundtrack wasn’t great, this wouldn’t be as big a deal, but much of what’s here is nearly as moving as the Requiem theme, and most definitely deserved more.
 
The main theme here, introduced immediately on the very first track, is dreamy and brooding, a big departure from the staccato edginess of the Requiem soundtrack. It works quite well as a counterpart to The Fountain, which cast Hugh Jackman as an anguished scientist trying to find the cure to his wife’s terminal illness. I mention this only because it fits so perfectly; those who haven’t seen the movie will still find plenty of value in the moody strings on “The Last Man” and “Stay With Me”,  and tribal drums of “Tree of Life” and “Finish It”.
 
Mansell’s expansions on the main theme are just as compelling. “First Snow” conveys urgency without breaking from the introspective qualities found at the soundtrack’s core, and the “Death is the Road to Awe” takes ideas introduced there and runs with them, adding a lush background of a pounding backbeat, a backing choir, and additional instruments to compliment the strings. If I had one criticism about the music itself, it would be that tracks like “Death is the Road to Awe” are the exception; such variety and length (it’s over eight minutes long) applied in choice sections elsewhere in the album could have truly made this a classic effort.
 
As mentioned, the other albatross here is length. It seems inconceivable that a theme with such potential is limited to a handful of tracks that combined stop short of 45 minutes. I can only hope that this piece of music is shared around as much as Requiem’s was, and expansions on it are generated in the process.
 
Had there been more here with just a bit more variety, this would’ve easily ranked as one of the top OSTs in recent memory, handily keeping up with the big boys like John Williams and Danny Elfman. As it stands, what’s here is very good and should not be missed.
 
9/10

2 Comments »

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment