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The case of filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan is unique. One of
the most gifted directors arising from mainstream cinema of
the 1990s, after an exceptional early career his films have
become more and more critical and financial failures. And
yet Shyamalan did not give up of making the movies the way
he wanted, with absolute control over every aspect of the
production. As well as director, he always was the author of
stories and screenplays, and has always had the luck to be
granted by studios and producers the creative freedom that
he demanded. But the successive fails seem to have changed
this scenario, and in this sense his new film, The Last
Airbender, is an uncharted territory.
I say this because, despite being written and directed by
Shyamalan, this will be his first movie based on a third
party material - most notably in the acclaimed animated
series Avatar - The Last Airbender, which I never
watched by the way. Moreover, fleeing from the suspense and
mystery of his past works (but still retaining the imprint
of a fantastic storytelling) the movie belongs to an
atypical genre for the director: it is an action-fantasy
epic. Proving that things are harder for Shyamalan, even
before its premiere the production ran into trouble: to not
to be confused with James Cameron’s film, the production was
forced to remove the word "Avatar" from the titles, and
recently Shyamalan was accused for racism since he didn’t
hire eastern actors to play the leading roles.
At the time of writing this
review there's a full month until the film's premiere, and I
only have as reference the promising trailers already
released. But there is an creative value which I already had
access and I can share my thoughts about it with you: the
original score composed by Shyamalan's usual collaborator,
James
Newton Howard, which will be released on CD and digital
download by Lakeshore Records on June 29. Howard, even in
the most slashed filmmaker’s films, has always held a work
of the highest competence, and I'm glad to say that in
The Last Airbender he not only repeated the feat, but
also wrote one of the best scores resulting from this
partnership.
Like the film itself, the
soundtrack moves away from suspense and mistery and explores
other territories. The album starts with the excellent "Airbender
Suite," which sets the tone for this remarkable Howard’s
work. As the name suggests, the track is an 11 minutes long
suite, built upon several motifs that carries segments that
could have been composed by, one say, Basil Poledouris in
the 1980s. It's a real breath of fresh air as we approach
the end of the first decade of the 21st century, that we can
enjoy a genuine orchestral, traditional and epic score like
this one. It is difficult to evaluate a score without having
seen the film which it accompanies, but at the end of this
initial track is hard to stop thinking that, once again, the
composer has provided a wonderful musical support for the
images.
The CD’s initial track is also
one of its highlights, and this fact could affect the
evaluation of the material that follows. However Howard has
done a mostly homogenous work, that is never far from the
high standard that he establishes at the beginning of the
album. He does not deliver a proper main theme but instead
we get a recurring motif heard at some points of the score,
even at its end. The music is performed predominantly by a
full orchestra with no fewer than 120 instruments, dominated
by the strings section. But woodwinds and brass are also a
strong presence, and despite the inevitable electronic
support at certain passages, it does not remove the
eminently orchestral essence of the score.
If I have some criticism to say,
is that at some action sequences Howard employs the
percussion in a way that has become routine since Tan Dun’s
score for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, probably to
give the music an ethnic, eastern flavor. Hopefully Howard
does not take too much time to place other sections of the
orchestra along these accompaniments. Besides the
aforementioned "Airbender Suite", the highlights of the
score are "Earthbenders", "Journey to the Northern Water
Tribe," "The Blue Spirit," "The Spirit World," "We Could Be
Friends," "We Are Now the Gods" and in special the last
track, "Flow Like Water. " To close the score Howard has
wrote a piece that is at once lyrical, poignant and exciting.
If the movie can match the high level of this music,
certainly Shyamalan has relocated his career on the right
path, a feat worthy of the young hero known as The Last
Airbender. |
