Okay, okay, I know, I was the last person to see the new Batman movie The Dark Knight--I saw it this past weekend (last Thursday night, I think, with my lovely girlfriend). I am a huge fan of the director, Christopher Nolan, particularly his films Memento (one of my favorite movies, and one of the most brilliant movies, ever) and Batman Begins. Up there with the (in some ways) incomparable M. Night Shyamalan, Nolan is one of the greatest consummate filmmakers of our day. Going into The Dark Knight, then, I had high expectations. And I must say, before I get to the musical side, that it is an excellent movie in almost all respects. Yes, it's very dark and rather creepy, but it's an amazing movie. All that stuff you've heard about Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker--one of the greatest movie villains ever, posthumous Oscar, etc.? All true. Is this the most intelligent superhero movie ever? Very possible.
Okay, but we know this isn't a film blog. What was my opinion of the score from Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard?
Much as I felt about their score for Batman Begins; in a word, disappointing.
Hans Zimmer (who, interestingly enough, doesn't read music) and James Newton Howard are two of Hollywood's top five film composers. I particularly like Howard's (Newton Howard's?) work; for example, his scores for Peter Jackson's recent King Kong and all of Shyamalan's films. From such a composer, especially in collaboration with Zimmer who has scored movies such as The Da Vinci Code, The Last Samurai, and Gladiator, one would expect an impressive and memorable score.
It's memorable, all right, but only because it's so unimpressive that it's surprising from two A-plus-list composers.
I have to say that my recollections of the score in the movie may be tainted, because I was so engrossed with how awesome the rest of the movie was; but I didn't even remember much music at all, much less good music. The main theme from Batman Begins returns here: steady strings playing the alternating notes of a minor third, with occasional bass notes thrown in here and there somehow comprising both the bass and the melody. But they're occasional enough (i.e. far enough apart) that they don't make for much of a melody. You can hear a hint of this theme on the Amazon product page in the sample for the track "A Dark Knight" (the last track on the album), although that includes a bit of extra melody, in the low strings.
There is a progression of two chords which comes back very often in the score; you can hear it in the sample of "Introduce A Little Anarchy" (track 12)--which, as you may notice, includes as an accompaniment a slight variant on the minor third in the strings. You can perhaps hear James Newton Howard's influence in the sample of "Agent of Chaos" (track 11), which layers King Kong-esque piano over the minor third in the strings--are we starting to see a pattern here?
The most notable change from the Batman Begins score (and there aren't many) is the addition of the musical leitmotif, if you will, for the character of the Joker. You can hear the general idea in the sample of "Why So Serious," which is track 1 (and also "Always A Catch," track 5): a part-strings-part-electronic hum which slowly rises in pitch as it rises in volume. A creepy effect; it's not even really a theme, it's just that, an effect. But it's effective, and I have to say it's probably my favorite part of the score: it's interesting, it's provocative, and while it may not exactly be original it's definitely not a cliché.
After listening to the sample tracks on the Amazon page, I am perhaps willing to surrender a bit of ground. It seems that there was quite a bit of the score that I didn't notice in the movie. But even just listening to the samples, you can hear a great deal of homogeneity. There are basically three components to the score:
1. The strings playing the alternating minor third.
2. The two-chord progression.
3. The Joker's "theme."
If you listen through each of the samples on the page, almost all of them are variations--but only slightly changed variations--of one or more of these ideas. Yes, movie scores need a lot of coherence, but they need more variety than this.
The score is moody, dark, and brooding, as many of its reviewers have noted, but it accomplishes those ends by using the same means throughout. I can't say I was surprised, exactly, because I expected more of the same from Batman Begins; but I was certainly disappointed that it could not rise higher than the low expectations I'd set for it.
The Dark Knight is now the number one movie in America for the third straight weekend, which means that statistically, there's a very high chance that most of my readers have seen it. What are your thoughts? Agree or disagree?
(P.S. Just an FYI: In researching this post, I discovered that the score even has its own website: thedarkknightscore.com.)
1 comment:
This is a good summary of the feelings I didn't know I felt after watching 'The Dark Knight' in an IMAX theatre. I, too, was so overwhelemed with the dialogue, plot development, creation of Two Face, and especially Heath Ledger's execution of the Joker character, that the soundtrack made little impact on the rest of the film, other than, it was there.
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