So Simple It's Complex

The Edmonton Public Library has a sweet CD collection, and when I go to the Whitemud branch it's rare that I don't yank one or two items off the soundtrack shelf. Film scores are a favoured genre for me; there's nothing like music that tells a story, and the right score supports and elevates a film beyond that medium's capabilities. It seems like the film composer's club is a very small one, with the same names popping up again and again, and I imagine its a much harder discipline to succeed in than regular composing. To use an analogy, buying a gift for yourself is easy; buying a gift for someone else, to suit their taste, style, character, contents of their home is a practice that most people dread because it's usually so hard.

This week's film score of choice: Howard Shore's haunting, dread-filled backbone of Martin Scorsese's The Departed. That (excellent) film is an American re-telling of a (very good) Hong Kong drama called Infernal Affairs, and is a cop story about corruption, unhealthy determination, and the impacts of going deep undercover for those with consciences (a cop infiltrating a gang) and those without (a gang member infiltrating the cops).

Shore's score is centered around Spanish guitar styles, in particular the tango, and the reason this matters it's pretty far down the list of sounds expected to prop up an American police/gang drama based on Chinese source material and set in the heart of Boston's Irish community. Somehow, incredibly, the score not only works but sounds right. It takes on Mexican qualities at some points, building off the film's Wild West aspects and perhaps nodding to the fact that The Departed is in many ways its own kind of spaghetti western. It maintains the unrelenting gravitas of the film's story all the way through, and that non-problem is the only problem with it. Bubbly, sexy, festive Spanish guitar is very accessible and easy to listen to on a regular basis; dark, corrupted, threatening Spanish guitar is not. Whatever the case may be, it's a fantastic album that succeeds because of Shore's ability to produce the ultimate creative paradox: the music is so simple its complex.

If very dark American-ish Spanish guitar isn't your cup of tea, you can still enjoy the work of Howard Shore. He's worked on just about every film genre you can name, as well as many familiar titles, and is probably best known for his work on The Lord of the Rings. Even if you don't like instrumental music, if you like music period you'd be missing out big time by not listening to at least one Howard Shore film score. He's our Maurice Jarre.