Title:
The hateful eight
Year: 2015
Composer: Ennio Morricone
February 28th,
2016 Maestro Morricone finally received an Academy Award for an original film
score. In 2007 he was given an honorary award for his lifetime work and surely
nobody would expect him of winning another one after that. However
circumstances change and luckily they developed into one of the greatest
stories in film music history.
The
director Quentin Tarantino had previously never had an original film score in
his films but he had used Morricone’s compositions throughout his career and
expressed a deep admiration for the composer. For Djago unchained he actually asked Morricone to compose an original
song, which he did. There had been talks already at the time whether Morricone
could score the whole film but the idea was ditched. Luckily his next film was
another western, a genre Morricone is most known for, though his latest score
in the genre was with 1981’s Occhio alla
penna. Miraculously Maestro accepted the job (supposedly by the pressure of
his wife Maria) and the rest is history as they say. Already at the time of the
announcement and recording of the score, throughout the marketing and at the
time of the film’s screenings there was a fuss surrounding the score like no
other. Fortunately also the Academy finally acknowledged Maestro’s
contributions and gave him the award after all these years.
Maestro's Oscar speech
Morricone has
said in the interviews that his desire is to create absolute music and his film
music success was at the start of his career means to pay the bills so to say. This
is the closest he has given freedom to create something similar to that in film
music in many years. You see Tarantino pretty much allowed Maestro to create
anything he liked and he certainly wasn’t going to please anybody by offering
them a smooth and stereotypical pastiche. The result has almost no resemblance
to his previous western scores which was the composer’s intention too. What we
ended up with is an extremely brutal theme and variations -type of score with
barely any pauses in the bleakness. The way Tarantino also utilized Maestro’s
music is very in-your-face and ballsy which just deepens its impact. For
instance the film opens with a single long shot with just the savage music
creating the atmosphere. In the final film there were also a few cues used from
Maestro’s score to 1982’s The thing which
didn’t end up in that film. They fuse well with the more mysterious original
material, both expressing the feeling of isolation and dread in a restrained
fashion.
Before
listening to the score or seeing the film I too had no idea of what to expect.
Straight at the opening minutes of L’ultima
diligenza di Red Rock I was sure that I was in for a thrill ride. The sound
of ominous bassoons and a steady percussion track immediately reminded me of a
stagecoach riding by. This bassoon melody is the film’s main theme and there’s
something truly unsettling about it; like it’s a growling beast stalking its
prey and preparing for an attack. This animalistic quality continues throughout
the piece with the atmosphere intensifying with each added instrumental line. A
nod to Maestro’s previous works in the genre is included too in a form of
shouting “wah-wah” voices. Eventually Maestro brings out all the stops in an
immense crescendo for the whole string section playing the main theme while the
brass answers rhythmically in joint conversation. Ingeniously it’s not the end
but there’s time for a silent, sinister coda that tells the listener that the
worst is yet to come.
The score’s
other theme is Neve which is
introduced fully in its 12-minute form in track 8. Even though I adore what
Morricone did with his main theme, I actually think this cue is even better
than the opening. It is by no means flashy but a slowly developing mystery
which ultimately shrouds everything like the falling snow. It begins with an
intro melody that is oddly similar to Kylo
Ren’s theme from John Williams’ Star
Wars episode VII score. However from that on we hear a musicbox melody
similar to one Maestro used in Per
qualche dollaro in più which forms the basis to the rest of the cue. At
first it seems not much is going on but with clever orchestrations like crystal
clear solo trumpet which appears from time to time, quotes from the main theme
and a sublime feeling of isolation utilized by low woodwinds, Maestro keeps me
entertained till the very end. The closing chords are just wonderfully distant,
fading into uncertainty.
Recording a special LP album at the Abbey Road studios
Almost
everything derives from these two primary themes. Overture begins with a slow string version of the snow theme whose
pace thickens along with the musicbox and the underlying faint hints to the
main theme. Vice versa Narratore
letterario builds around the main theme starting from pizzicato strings and
the musicbox melody plays on top of that before moving to dramatic atonal
strings. Those also earn their own difficult cue called Sei cavelli. The reprise of the main theme in track 7 starts with
brutal percussion and reprises the original cue’s dramatic conclusion. The
reprises of Neve take another route
and are much more restrained than the long version, the first one just
repeating the intro and the second playing the musicbox melody in a beaten down
manner along with cooing main theme clarinet. Sangue e neve presents the dual personalities within one cue: it
begins with the musicbox building momentum and out of nowhere appears a brutal
string version of the main theme that vanishes as abruptly.
There are a
few exceptions to the monothematic structure. Raggi di sole sulla montagna is probably the most 'classical' sounding cue with very abstract harmonies formed by the strings and wandering
woodwinds which actually create a brief moment of serenity amid the otherwise
dark times. The two L’inferno bianco tracks
are very similar and the differences are almost nonexistent. They start with
some Morriconean action writing with several rhythmic stabs over a layer formed
by a martial drum and aforementioned wandering woodwinds. In the second part
the rhythmic stabs continue by themselves and are joined by a more intimate
bass and drum set and in the first version by a synth brass sound, and by a
larger brass section in the latter. The writing is once again challenging but
that also makes it rather unique. The last farewell La lettera di Lincoln is an elegy for a solo trumpet, organ and
warm strings which is rather lovely though short-lived.
Some
listeners might discard The hateful eight
for being boring. It’s true that it relies heavily on repetition like many
other Morricone scores. However the two long suites which Maestro bases all the
music on are probably the two best single compositions he has written in 2010s
and once again show his ability to reinvent himself after all these years. The
album presentation is a mess, the dialogue sounded okay after seeing the film
but now it leans more towards irritating. The songs are nothing special except
the guitar ballad Jennifer Jason Leigh sings. Overall it really is a historic
score which celebrates Maestro’s whole legacy in both absolute and film music during
the time when film music is being overrun by mediocrity.
Rating: ****1/2
Tracklist:
1. L'ultima
diligenza di Red Rock - Versione integrale (07:33) *****
2. Overture
(03:11) *****
3.
"Major Warren meet Daisy Domergue" (00:33) *
4. Narratore
letterario (02:02) *****
5. Apple
blossom (The White Stripes) (02:15) ***
6.
"Frontier justice" (01:51) *
7. L'Ultima
diligenza di Red Rock - #2 (02:38) *****
8. Neve -
Versione integrale (12:17) *****
9. "This
here is Daisy Domergue" (01:02) *
10. Sei cavalli (01:22) ****
11. Raggi di sole sulla montagna (01:42) *****
12. "Son
of the bloody ni**er killer of Baton Rouge" (02:44) *
13. Jim
Jones at Botany Bay (Jennifer Jason Leigh, featuring Kurt Russell) (04:11) ****
14. Neve -
#2 (02:06) ****
15. "Uncle
charlie's stew" (01:42) *
16. I
quattro passeggeri (01:50) *****
17. La
musica prima del massacro (02:02) ****
18. L'inferno
bianco - Synth (03:32) *****
19. The suggestive
Oswaldo Mobray (00:48) *
20. Now
you're all alone (David Hess) (01:31) ***
21. Sangue
e neve (02:06) *****
22. L'inferno
bianco - Ottoni (03:33) *****
23. Neve -
#3 (02:03) ****
24. Daisy's
speech (01:33) *
25. La
lettera di Lincoln - Strumentale (01:42) *****
26. La
lettera di Lincoln - Con dialogo (Ennio Morricone, Walton Goggins) (01:47) ****
27. There won't
be many coming home (Roy Orbison) (02:45) ***
28. La
puntura della morte (00:28) **
No comments:
Post a Comment