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I'm only in my mid-forties, but in terms of biblical films you may call
me a "dinosaur". When I heard about this genre of movies, the
titles that come to my mind are classics like The Robe, The Ten
Commandments, Ben Hur and King of Kings, all of them
large-scale movies with scores of epical proportions. In musical terms, this
means that I think about the genre related to the music of legendary
composers like Alfred Newman, Miklos Rozsa and Elmer
Bernstein in my mind. By the time being, for the 2003/2004 season the
genre is getting a revival, when no one else but Jesus Christ himself is
starring two lengthy productions - Mel Gibson's The Passion of Christ
and Philip Saville's The Gospel of John.
The first to hit the screens is this The Gospel of John, and in
contrast with Gibson's film, which represents Christ's last moments on Earth
in a realistic and even violent way, this Canadian/British production avoids
graphic images and focuses on the teachings of the Messiah. In such a way,
this is a more contemporary and modern vision of Christ, and this approach
ought obligatorily to be reflected in the soundtrack. The musical score for The
Gospel of John was created by composer/pianist/guitarist Jeff Danna,
whose film work includes scores for movies such as O, Green Dragon
and Kids Stay in the Picture, the controversial documentary about the
famous Hollywood executive, Robert Evans.
Since the movie carries a modernized way to see and understand Christ and
his teachings, Danna intelligently avoids the classic musical treatment
featured in the old epic movies. Consistently with his own style, the
composer created a mostly intimate score, with lots of strings although with
historical accuracy for the era. Danna and orchestrator/conductor Nicholas
Dodd made an extensive research about the music and the instruments that
existed at the time of Christ's life, and the results have been highly
satisfactory. The score was performed by The Philharmonic Orchestra of
London, augmented by a dozen instruments from ancient Roman culture, and
recorded in a church. This blend of the ancient Middle-East sounds with a
Western large orchestra is sometimes striking, to say the least.
Danna's elegant and delicate approach is best represented by the tender string
motif for Jesus, the main theme of the score. However, some of the album
highlights - "Mary Washes Jesus' Feet" and "Follow Me" -
feature the French soprano Esther Lamandier singing Christian chants in
Aramaic - the language of Jesus - in operatic proportions. Besides this more
intimate and melodic side of the score, which privileges simple but
beautiful harmonies, there are some powerful, percussive elements in Danna's
music. There is a drum-driven theme best heard in "Jesus at the
Temple" (powerful brass), "Pilate's Dilemma" and
"Betrayal". Anyway, the strongest moments of the score come from
its gentle, tender and
sometimes somber moments, that start already with the first cue, "For God So Loved The
World".
The Gospel of John provides a soaring and
richly-textured musical accompaniment to the timeless story of the mission
of early Christianity, and is a great achievement for Jeff Danna’s body of
work. It perfectly matches the images that Saville placed in the screen, and
even being a significant departure from the music of the old epics, the
score actually sounds biblical. A remarkable combination of the historical
and the modern.
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