Thomas Newman is one of the few soundtrack composers out there
\nwho still view a soundtrack as a musical means to tell a story, not
\nan attempt to paste together a bunch of musical acts together for
\nthe sake of making a hit album. His score for
\nAmerican Beauty<\/i> helped the movie maintain its intoxicating
\nflow.<\/p>\n
Now he’s back again with
\nErin Brockovich<\/i>. And once again, Newman’s score helps the
\nfilm as much as the great performances given by Julia Roberts and
\nAlbert Finney. Listening to the movie’s soundtrack onscreen makes
\nperfect sense: many of the songs use odd instrumentation to create
\na watery motif. The lead track, “Useless” has an upbeat piano
\ncadence that sounds like a rallying cry to the protagonist of the
\nfilm.<\/p>\n
However, listen to the soundtrack in your car or just on your
\nstereo and
\nErin Brockovich<\/i> loses a lot of its commercial zest. In fact,
\nlistening to the soundtrack on its own merits sounds every bit as
\navant garde as Philip Glass or John Cage. Fortunately, much of the
\nsoundtrack has stirring string sequences to keep its humanism
\nintact.<\/p>\n
The soundtrack has a sewn together feel as some songs are fully
\nformed and others simply surface for a few seconds and then lead
\ninto one of two Sheryl Crow songs on the soundtrack. Many songs are
\ntitled after the event that the song appears in the movie, such as
\n“Chicken Fat Lady” and “Lymphocytes.” When my mother asked the
\ntitle of a song she liked on this soundtrack, it took all of my
\ncomposure to say “No Colon” with a straight face.<\/p>\n
Some tracks worked great on the screen, but seem to be a
\nscatterbrained artistic mess, like “Xerox Copy” and “Holding
\nPonds.” However, the soundtrack manages to maintain much of the
\nheart that is in the film. Part of the reason for this is the
\ncatchy, repeating song variations spread neatly throughout the
\nsoundtrack. The musical cadence of “Useless” pops up throughout and
\na playful piano arrangement gives songs like “On The Plume” and
\n“Classifieds” a great pop edge.<\/p>\n
The two Sheryl Crow songs, “Redemption Day” and “Every Day Is A
\nWinding Road” were inspiration to director Steven Soderbergh.
\nBecause many of Crow’s songs deal with blue-collar characters, her
\nsongs are a perfect compliment to this soundtrack.<\/p>\n
If you are not a fan of new-age classical music,
\nErin Brockovich<\/i> may not be the best soundtrack to invest in.
\nHowever, the soundtrack serves the ultimate purpose of a good
\nsoundtrack: the music automatically recalls to the listener when
\nand where they were in the film when they first heard it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":28043,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5729],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-39436","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-soundtrack","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=39436"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=39436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}