Music Composed by Brian Tyler
Rating: *** 1/2

The state of Brian Tyler’s career is tricky to assess – on the one hand, he rattled the film music community last year with no less than 7 breakthrough scores, nearly all of which demanded critical attention. On the other hand, every major film he managed to get himself attached to was a dismal box office and critical failure (perhaps it says something that of the bunch, the film with the highest artistic merit starred Bruce Campbell as an elderly Elvis fighting mummies). What looks like a watershed for the film music fans sadly does not always register the same way as far as Hollywood is concerned. It is doubtful that Godsend, a relatively low-key drama/sci-fi thriller, will provide Tyler with much of a stepping stone as far as his career is concerned, but musically it does give him a chance to write in a more mature vein and remind us that there’s more to him than the orchestral pyrotechnics of last year’s various action extravaganzas.

Brian Tyler

To an extent, at any rate. I have yet to see the film, but little of what I know about it sounds promising. It appears to deal with a married couple that has a lost a child and is offered the morally ambiguous opportunity to clone the child back. This is a thought-provoking premise that has been at the forefront of cloning ethics for the past decade – it’s a shame that film appears to use the premise as the set up for a by-the-numbers horror/suspense story (trailers and press releases indicate that little clone-boy turns out evil because…well because otherwise the filmmakers would actually have to think about the implications they’ve raised). Tyler’s score seems to fall along similar lines – it starts with promising concepts but gradually begins to deteriorate under the weight of horror and suspense conventions. But when he does manage to rise above the problems that (I can only assume) are inherent in the film itself, Tyler displays some of his most mature and emotionally involving writing to date.

Where the score works best is where it responds to the human aspects of the story, centering on the parents’ confused blur of loss, dread, and hope surrounding their son. Stylistically, this side of the score is closest to Tyler’s delicate work on Frailty, though one might argue that the best moments of Godsend are even more developed then that earlier score. Somehow Tyler manages to pull off the near impossible feat of writing music that is emotionally potent without being manipulative and subtle without falling victim to anonymous mulling. “Godsend Main Title” demonstrates these qualities the best, and reminds me of Danny Elfman’s approach to similar minded dramas in its ability to unveil the film’s main theme in a fashion that is powerful but never obvious. The theme itself is comprised of two halves, the first rising with a sense of reserved dread and anguish, the second responding with warmer empathetic chords, as though the music is trying to console the characters while embodying their grief. Layered over the melody are cross-fading electronic manipulations and driving minimalist rhythmic patterns that give the theme a much-appreciated sense of forward motion, propelling the musical narrative along each time the theme reappears.

A second theme appears for the child himself in “Adam”. Here, Tyler pens a gentle melancholy lullaby for solo piano, appropriately recalling the definitive score for bittersweet childhood innocence, Bernstein’s To Kill a Mockingbird. The most instantly recognizable theme in the score, it reappears frequently and with little variation, but always to great effect (and given the darker nature of the film, I imagine that the theme plays in dramatically different contexts throughout the course of the narrative).

For a brief period, Tyler maintains this strong flow of uninterrupted dramatic development. Unfortunately, from the 5th track and on, Tyler begins to loose his footing and is forced to resort to a balancing act between maintaining the emotional drive he’s built and responding to the suspense/horror side the story has taken on. Constant interruptions by eerie suspense music and discordant horror stingers undermine the dramatic momentum and threaten to lower the score to the level of standard slasher fare. This approach was all good fun in a film like Darkness Falls, but set against music that actually seems to be striving for something meaningful, the superficial scare-tactics are immeasurably detrimental. With aggressive brass grunts and mildly avant-garde atonal instrumental effects, the music is never less than well composed (though more than a little derivative of Elliot Goldenthal), but it has the effect of leaving the audience cold and halting any emotional involvement in the score. Now, I’m sure that to some level Tyler was only responding to the pattern the film had taken, and the effects of the shock-stingers were no doubt what the filmmakers wanted. But as an independent piece of music, the horror conventions only serve as stumbling blocks in what might otherwise have been Tyler’s richest work to date.

This is not to say that the rest of the score is all bumps and chills. Both themes from the score’s opening reappear frequently amidst the stingers, and while they rarely regain the same power they opened with, they do succeed in bringing the heart back to the story each time that heart seems to be lost for good. Moving highlights also appear in a yet another return to the chord progression Tyler used to build his main themes from Children of Dune and Bubba Ho-Tep in “New Home” and “No Return.” While Tyler probably can’t afford to use the progression too many more times without wearing it out, its effect is still moving and much appreciated amidst the aggression. Here, the progression has a bittersweet but hopeful countenance that provides a much needed counter to the surrounding anguish. It’s especially effective in the concluding, “No Return,” though the effect is all but ruined by the one-last-shock ploy in the following “Completion.”

When you have is essentially two scores – one a subtle but poignant work, the other a serviceable but unmemorable horror score. The fact that they’re shuffled together rather than neatly separated into two segments means that you unfortunately have to take the good with the bad while listening. But for fans of Tyler’s work, especially those who appreciated Frailty (which I believe remains his all-around strongest work), the better portions make the score well worth picking up. If nothing else, Godsend shows evidence of Tyler’s maturing voice and hints at what he might be able to pull off given a thought-provoking film unimpeded by thriller clichés. (Originally posted April 24, 2004).

Music Composed, Conducted and Produced by Brian Tyler; Orchestrated by Robert Elhai, Dana Niu and Brian Tyler; The Northwest Sinfonia Recorded at Saint Thomas Chapel, Washington; Scoring Engineer: Jeff Vaughn / Mixed by Jeff Vaughn and Brian Tyler; Availability: In print; Label (Catalog): Varèse Sarabande, (302 066 250 2); Release Date: April 27, 2003

01. Godsend Main Titles (3′33)
02. Adam (1′14)
03. Zachary (3′46)
04. Birth (1′46)
05. Regression (1′53)
06. Face Down (1′33)
07. Contemplation (2′52)
08. Near Miss (2′17)
09. Not To Me (2′21)
10. Damp Woods (3′59)
11. To Godsend (2′26)
12. Did I Die? (1′04)
13. New Home (2′21)
14. Transfigurations (2′56)
15. Second Opinion (1′34)
16. Epiphany (0′54)
17. Shack In The woods (2′22)
18. Photo Discovery (2′21)
19. First Disturbance (2′10)
20. Loathing (1′42)
21. Funeral (1′34)
22. Crash (2′17)
23. Draw The Burning Building (3′56)
24. Curtains (2′07)
25. Illusion Confusion (2′04)
26. Comatose (1′30)
27. Darkroom (1′31)
28. No Return (1′42)
29. Completion (1′02)
30 Godsend End Titles (4′20)

Total Playing Time: 67′16