The Unforgotten

I realize that I rarely analyze film scores on my blog. This reason is threefold: first, I’m too lazy to put forth the effort; second, only about six people would care anyway, and the rest usually just stop checking the blog for a while when it gets too inaccessible; third, usually Herr Vogler does enough of that on his blog that I don’t see the need to “step on any toes” or infringe on his territory or whatever.

Well, I am going to give a somewhat cursory overview of a score I’ve recently been listening to a lot: The Unforgotten, composed by Brad M. Fowler. It’s a very smart low-budget thriller.

The title suite immediately grabs your attention and says, “Hey, not all movies have to sound like Remote Control or Media Ventures.” Mr. Fowler uses the orchestra to paint an impressionistic warning: “Tyler Bates Clones Not Allowed.”

The overture is chromatic and moody, conveying a subdued sense of foreshadowing without being too obvious about what you’re in for when you watch the film. It takes the smart approach, not revealing its hand right away. The brilliant balance between harp and vibraphones is meticulously handled as the stacks of 9th chords lead you around and around, until you’ve lost your tonal center, all the while never deviating from a tightly constructed six-note motive that serves as the glue that binds the entire score together. So, before the film even really begins, we have in our ears a rich, orchestral canvas and just enough of the total material to recognize the development throughout.

Most of the first act of the film is low-key, obviously Minimalist-inspired yet with an “old-school” scoring approach that evokes a mixture of Bernard Herrmann, John Adams, and just a dash of some of James Newton Howard’s better subtlety. We still have a limited set of musical devices, keeping it all very neat and tidy, but there’s enough subtle growth to give us the distinct feeling that the film and the score is going somewhere, an aspect often lost on most contemporary film scores that opt instead for a grab bag of archetypal cues that don’t necessarily fit with the greater whole.

Spiral Meltdown, the scene in which the protagonist begins to understand just how off everything is, strikes a chord in the viewer, and this is largely due to the stark revelation in the score. The music reaches the loudest dynamic marking so far without actually going over the top. I think perhaps what makes this cue so brilliant is the orchestration: he drives the point home by using unisons and parallel octaves in extreme register differences, providing a glaring sense of hollowness that reflects the shock of the protagonist as the truth of his existence is revealed to him. Fowler orchestrates this very carefully, making the orchestra sound larger than it really is while still leaving the music itself, as I said, starkly hollow. This is largely accomplished through the doublings (obviously) and the employment of sound mass.

Obviously, the best piece from this is the eight-minute long action/suspense sequence, Falling Into Place. The piece starts from silence, almost subconsciously, growing in the strings, adding one stringed instrument at a time until the ear realizes that it’s already two minutes into a development. At this point, the rhythmic drive becomes apparent, though seamlessly introduced. This rhythmic drive carries on throughout the entire sequence, the orchestration swelling until it reaches critical mass at the climax.

I have come to really love cues like this, building to a fully gratifying sound without even noticeably changing the tempo to keep it “fresh” or to “get more mileage.” Some of the best parts of the Bourne sequels do this. They essentially hypnotize you with the straightforwardness without dumbing it down with sudden, obvious changes in key and tempo just to keep grabbing your attention. Music like this actually develops instead of just repeatedly hitting the Reset Button on your ears. No, this kind of action is darker, more steady, and more rewarding, I think.

Obviously there are harmonic hints of Jerry Goldsmith in this cue by the end, but the material itself is still related to the rest of the film. Whether Fowler was forced to emulate the temp track is hard to say, because if he did, he did a fine job of making it his own.

You could really take this cue by itself and have the essence of the whole score, it’s that comprehensive. I’d recommend taking the whole thing, just because it flows so well, but Falling Into Place is obviously the highlight of the whole score.

I only touched on the best parts of the score here, though the rest of it is definitely a study in the development of limited material.

The whole score is just over an hour, though the album was never commercially released on account of the fact that this movie doesn’t even exist and I fabricated this entire post out of boredom. Thanks for reading, suckers.