Music Monday: Film Scores I Love, Part One

     First of all, let me admit to having a rather limited taste in films. I don't do thrillers, science fiction, quirky indies (sounds vaguely vulgar, somehow), anything with a lot of nudity, violence, and/or foul language, films about war, third world countries, politics ... well, maybe it would be simpler to say what kinds of films I do like. Then again, if you read this blog on anything like a regular basis, you can probably form a pretty good idea on your own. Plus which, I have listed some of my favorite films of all time in the left sidebar of this page, a list clearly indicative of the kinds of films I'm repeatedly drawn to.

     Given this limited taste, one may come to the logical and correct conclusion that my knowledge of film scores is consequently limited as well. I'm sure there are many musical scores of films I would never choose to see that I would actually love were I to hear them. But since so much of the success of a film score depends on how well it enhances the visual, I'll most likely never come to know them. When I listen to a score without the film, there are inevitably pieces of incidental or underscoring music that sound forlornly unfulfilled on their own, as if they lack the framework of bones to hold up their skin. Of course, there are fabulous themes and theme songs that stand on their own, such as "Goldfinger," "Alfie," "Moon River" from Breakfast at Tiffany's, "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, "Let the River Run" from Working Girl, to name just a few (am I dating myself?); and the John Williams themes, all of which tend to sound alike. (Have you ever noticed, music wonks, that the themes from Superman, ET,  and Star Wars all begin with the interval of a fifth?)

     One main theme I love is the end credits of Shadowlands (1993, Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger), music by George Fenton and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra:

     The opening of the film is also very beautiful, Fenton's own setting of "Veni, Sancte Spiritus" sung by the Choir of Magdalen College, Oxford:



     In fact, if I had to choose just one film composer as my favorite, I would probably choose George Fenton. He's not only capable of writing stunningly beautiful and evocative music, he can write music in the style of any period and make it sound absolutely authentic. A very good example of this can be heard in the trailer for 84, Charing Cross Road, a film that covers a period of twenty years from the late '40s to the late '60s:



      Fenton also wrote the scores to films such as Gandhi, Dangerous Liasons, Dangerous Beauty, and You've Got Mail, as well television series such as Planet Earth, Blue Planet, and Life. I love the music he wrote for You've Got Mail -- relatively sparse as it is among all the borrowed pop standards -- it's fittingly cute and quirky, but then there's also the brief nostalgic waltz that swells up under the scene where Meg Ryan's character reminisces about "twirling" with her mother.

     Another Fenton favorite of mine is his score to Ever After: A Cinderella Story.



     Though the recipient of many awards, including multiple Emmys, Ivor Novellos, and BAFTAs, and nominated for countless others, including five nominations for the Academy Award, Oscar has so far eluded him -- unjustly, I think. His versatility and gift for musical idiom is certainly on a level with the greatest and most honored film composers, past and present.

     Many of Fenton's scores are available through Amazon.

Working Through Pain

"We read to know we're not alone." That's a line from the 1993 film Shadowlands, which starred Anthony Hopkins as the writer C. S. Lewis. Lewis didn't come up with that line; it was one of his students, who in turn was quoting his father. But those words hit a nerve with Lewis in the film, and they hit a nerve with me. When I first heard them, I realized that, besides my love of good writing, one of the main reasons I read is unconditional companionship. Another is validation.

There was a time, during my years in Houston, I went through a prolonged depression of a kind I had never before experienced and have never again since. Although well aware of what had triggered it, I was at rather a loss as to how to pull myself out of it, other than writing a good deal in my journal. Mind you, this was all prior to my religious "reversion," so I really did feel alone despite my good friends. Comes a point when you no longer want to prevail upon your friends' sympathy for fear of wearing it thin.

On the worst days, I found myself getting in my car and sitting there for long minutes, wondering where I wanted to go. Sometimes I wound up going to a music store, where I'd spend an hour perusing the racks of CDs, picking up around ten or so, only to put them all back and leave the store as empty-handed as I entered. More often than not, I went to a bookstore. I would weave in and out of the stacks of fiction and biography (for some reason, I've always spurned so-called "self help" books), trying to find a story similar to my own, so that I would know I wasn't alone. I did find something once in a while that had elements similar to my experience, which helped—sometimes I'd be comforted; other times, I'd end up actually laughing at myself. If it were fiction, it interested me to see how the author treated the particular situation I identified with, how he depicted the character, whether or not I thought he "got it right." If it were a biography, a diary, or correspondence, I of course felt a stronger connection, it being someone else's true life experience. Either way, books provided the companionship and validation I so badly needed.

In the film, however, Lewis comes to realize that reading is not experience. Reading can't teach you what experience can teach you. Most importantly, he discovers that, in substituting reading for experience, he was subconsciously avoiding the inevitable pain that experience can sometimes bring. In the end, his own words come back to him: "Pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world." So he decides to open his heart to experience, and to the healing power of pain.

It wasn't long after that period of depression that I rediscovered my faith. God is a patient suitor; he waits until you're ready before he endows you with that precious gift. There was indeed much pain to work through. Maybe he knew, given my love of words, that I had to read about it first before I was able to face and experience it truthfully in myself.