Terrible Music Score

Hmm. I was going to jump into this thread and tell you how wrong you were (depending on the specifics you cited as a response to my post), but now I'm wondering.

Maybe I'm the wrong person to be commenting on this at all, since I think score is horribly overused in most films, and directors ought always to look first at how a scene plays with no score.

Having said that, still, I really did like the score in this film, simply because I thought it went along well with the "old movie" feel, a throwback to Lean films of the past (I say that with complete respect and affection). I saw the film initially--about a dozen viewings ago, I think--on the big screen, and I remember at the time thinking it must have been like seeing Lawrence of Arabia or Bridge on the River Kwai was, a quarter-century or so before. It really just blew me away, both visually and thematically, and I still think it may be the most underrated great film ever. I also thought the score during the opening credits (trust me, in a dark theater those credits really set the mood of the film and transported you SO far out of time and place in 1985--think Pee Wee's Big Adventure and Weird Science, and then this film) was really, really suited to the purpose, in combination with the visuals there.

BUT:

Now that I think about it, I'm not so ready to argue that this was the best possible score. I still don't think it was even nearly "terrible," nor do I think score ought to be obligated to "catch" anybody's mental state or "suit a mood" in any sort direct and obvious way, etc. (OK, that last part is where my prejudice against score in general comes out, so you can disregard that.) But when I think of the score through many stretches of this film, I'm thinking there was quite a bit of typical Western-style orchestra, lots of strings, lots of big-old-movie feeling. Which leaves us with a problem that I think you've identified, actually: In a really ironic way, given the thematic elements of the film, don't we have kind of an English movie--a damn good one, but still--about India? Or if not "about" India, about characters coming to grips with India, in a mode you see IMHO in all great literature to one extent or another--what the Russian formalists (particularly Shklovsky) called "ostranenie," or "estrangement," yanking you out of your categorical rut-bound state of mind into something where your usual interpretive mechanisms are defeated, and you don't have symbols or categories or mental constructs mediating your direct experience of reality? I mean, isn't that what Mrs. Moore talks about, and what Adela experiences in a way that is at first exhilirating and then terrifying (cf. the literary definition of "sublime," esp. Edmund Burke's)? And if so, how does a traditional Western score with the usual orchestra, etc., remotely fit that, even for somebody (like me) who doesn't demand too much of a "fit"?

Yeah. Starts seeming like it was less than it could've been. Yup. Uh-oh.

Now I'm in a fix, because I'm thinking you're right--if you made this film today, surely you'd do something else with the score. Or just not have one, or only barely have one (my preference, take your pick). But how do you remake Lean? How do you EVER get any actress to even begin to touch what Judy Davis did with Adela--or even what we saw with Mrs. Moore's and Fielding's characters? (Sorry--I think most everybody else was replaceable, including Victor Banerjee. But certainly not Judy Davis, in what I thought was, like the movie, the most underrated great acting performance in history.)

So without talking about a remake--which you weren't--and speaking only of whether Jarre's score was as good as it could be, you've moved me off my position. I still like it OK, but I can't make a case for it being as advanced conceptually as it should've been. Damn.

Incidentally, I don't remember Dead Poets so well--I think I wasn't as big a fan of that film as other people were, and haven't seen it repeatedly (it may be a sort of difficult relationship with Robin Williams as a central character in nearly any movie, which is my own personal problem, admittedly)--but I agree with you about Witness, if memory serves (I've seen it maybe six or eight times, and absolutely love it, as I love almost anything Weir ever touched).