by Swashbuckler on 3/21/2000
favorite track: 4
 
This film's trailers used Jimi Hendrix's version of "The Star Spangled Banner," and the poster art implies a very gritty and rough film, implying a soundtrack loaded with hardcore songs.

Instead, the film opens to an elegy for strings and chorus. The score remains in this mode throughout, with a quasi-religious choral theme recurring during the most dramatic moments. Anne Dudley nails perfectly this film's introspective nature (as opposed to reacting to its harrowing subject matter).

The score does have other idioms, however. The exciting "Playing to Win" underscores a scene where the racist main characters play a game of basketball against a group of black men for control of a park. The scene (beautifully photographed by Tony Kaye using wide-angle lenses to maximum effect) is a difficult one to watch; the motivations of the characters are antithetical to morality, yet the sincerity of the performers and the intensity of the sequence lead you to root for them.

This is one of the most complex scenes in the film because of the moral ambiguities inherent, and its use of a familiar cinematic trope (the sporting event) in a different way.

Dudley's music allows the audience to be hoodwinked into reprehensible alliances, yet on closer examination, the music itself is not actually taking either side. It is only commenting on the level of intensity of the GAME; only near the end does the music align itself with the racists, by which point the score would have little effect on the perception of the game itself.

The next track underscores another of the film's tour-de-force sequences, in which Edward Furlong's character witnesses Norton's character killing two black men and being arrested. The main theme of the score returns; Norton looks toward his younger brother as he surrenders to the police with a "Go forth, and do my willing" expression. Dudley's choral music gives Norton's character a sense of spiritual ecstasy.

The score, when listened to on its own, remains entrancing during the entire fifty minute running time. Dudley's music does not endorse the character's viewpoints, but rather adds a layer to their performances. As a result, when divorced from the images, the music tells its own story, though some of the same structure and themes as the film.

The sound on this disc is excellent, with the dynamic "Playing to Win" sequence being a great demo track to listen to while shopping for a new sound system.