Granted, the focus of the movie was on an idealistic love story instead of on tactics of warfare, but as was posted some time previously, the goal of a movie is to make money, in the end. That means that to achieve a wider audience, a universal theme was tied in. Taking that into account, I find the film rather refreshing in terms of balancing wide appeal and military suspense, not to mention plain quality when compared to some of the movies we see coming out these days. Charlie's Angels 2, Kangaroo Jack, and God forbid the new "Cancun Uncut" (or whatever it is) movie see the light of day.

Now, for whatever reason, Mr. Horner decided to use the theme he did. Perhaps he wanted to recall some of the emotion present in Schindler's List without hearkening fully back to it. Judging from what I've read, most of you would say he failed in that regard. But it's still not really your judgment call to make on how much work he put into it-- regardless of how (in)sincere your death threats are.

Enemy at the Gates is not, by far, my favorite movie score, but I did buy the soundtrack based on how I felt during the movie. *shrug* I'm not really disappointed with that decision. I enjoy the actual instrumentation, as well as the male russian-esque chorus pieces scattered throughout. I think, in the end, he made a score that works, and stuck with it.

I honestly wish one of those were true. It would make the man so much more interesting than he is. One thing I have always appreciated about Horner is that he has given film music fans the widest possible choice set with respect to what music from each score he makes available. I don't want to hear 70 minutes plus of Enemy at the Gates, or 60 minutes plus of Windtalkers, or even the 70 minutes plus of the superb Four Feathers. But Horner in his lengthy releases has given me the choice of which subset of his music I would like to listen to.

Either through CD programming, or through burning shorter CDs, I often listen to the following selections from his recent scores, and I find each quite enjoyable if I'm in the mood:

Enemy at the Gates: 1, 3, 4, 10, 11, 12.

Windtalkers: 3, 2, 4, 6, 9, 11.

A Beautiful Mind: 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 12, 14, 16. (I actually think this is a wonderful score, despite the obvious self-quotation. You can approach the self-quotation from this point of view I feel: each time he does it he does it better than the last, and I feel in ABM Horner perfected material he had developed in Bobby Fischer, Sneakers, Bicentennial Man and other scores.)

The Four Feathers: 1, 2, 7, 11, 10, 12, 13.

Unfortunately I've never heard Iris, so I can't really comment on that one.

I feel deep down that Horner's 'quotation of a certain composition by John Williams' was never actually a quotation. Had it appeared for the first time in Enemy, the suggestion would be fair enough - it's a film set in Eastern Europe, it's during WWII, lots of people die painful deaths, hey!, that theme by John Williams really captured this feeling, I wonder if I can get away with plagiarising an Oscar winner! Yes, I'm being coy, but I could imagine it.

But the Tanya theme (let's call it by its intended name) appeared long before Enemy at the Gates in Horner's work, and I would like to suggest that it grew naturally out of his own compositional style. It appears for a brief moment in Apollo 13 (I can't remember where, but I remember it is there). You can hear it for a moment in the first Titanic album, around 6:18 minutes into the track 'Death of Titanic'. Listen for it after that almighty orchestral blast at 6:05-6:10 into the piece. When Horner came to Enemy and devised the theme that he did for Tanya, he was dusting off an old motif from his earlier scores. The question becomes: was he imitating Williams when he first devised it? In the context of those films, it just seems highly unlikely that he would have consciously done so, without the obvious connection between Enemy and Schindler.

What I do like about Tanya's theme is the way Horner developed it next. With some slight alteration it becomes the lovely theme for Windtalkers (listen to track 2), and with further adjustment, that sweeping theme from Four Feathers (track 13, around the 6 minute and then the 8 minute mark). And now that he's explored that theme in about as many ways as he can, I suspect that with his next score (does anyone know what that is BTW?), he'll move onto more of the melodic type of material we heard in Four Feathers.

quote:

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Originally posted by franz_conrad:
Surely this is the longest running topic in the history of the moviemusic.com.

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What i mean is that every composer makes some themes alike,and if they are good,then

Clayton

PS>I liked how this CD has CD Text, pretty nifty!