Am I Not Macho Enough?!? (Gladiator - Soundtrack)

Member Name: berlioz II

Product:	Gladiator - Soundtrack
Date:	22/02/07 (567 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Entertaining to the max, a nice hour's indulgence

Disadvantages: Plagiaristic and rather too synth driven

THE BALLAD OF WIZARD HANS

There once was a wizard named Hans Zimmer,
Whose popularity exceeded all claims.
Even though some may feel a bit bitter,
Truth is he always appealed to the audience’s brains.

There came a movie everybody knows,
Called Gladiator starring Russell Crowe.
Zimmer was appointed to show where the horn blows,
May it be a synthesizer often replaced the real one’s glow.

What Zimmer put together appealed to a wide range,
From old and young to the cynical rock’n’roll teen.
There was a feel that embraced our contemporary age
While Lisa Gerrard provided the Eastern sheen.

Celebrities ensued with many calling it the best ever,
An Oscar nomination followed bolstering the fame of the score.
Zimmer was called the greatest wizard yet, many doubting anybody could do better,
And the wizard laughed, he laughed all the way to his core.

But not all is wine and roses in the hall of fame,
Accusations of plagiarism sometimes from people’s mouths fell.
All’s not always how it seems, that is the nature of the game;
That in time could even the Holst Foundation tell.

A law suit did they the wizard serve,
For using another wizard’s composition called Mars.
The case was laid down with quite a bit of verve,
Though we are yet to hear the results from the fella named Lars.

But the people could little less care,
To them wizard Hans still stands mighty and tall.
Thus he continues with his old game of dare,
Keeping popular even amonst the peasants at the mall.

- Berlioz: Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, circa 2006.


Thus goes the legend of the wizard Hans Zimmer. Whether you want to view that history as the pinpoint of perfection in film scoring or stand in the sidelines with a sardonic smile on your face,
knowingly saying to passers-by “That’s where everything that is wrong with film scoring began,” there is no denying that the score for Ridley Scott’s 2000 film Gladiator is an extremely enjoyable score both in the film and as a stand alone listening experience. Zimmer’s previous scores for films like Backdraft, The Peacemaker and Crimson Tide had solidified a new sound to film scoring that was more akin to contemporary rock music, only combining an orchestral sound with simple, yet memorable themes, loud and fast moving action replete with synthesizers, and a certain sense of less formal way to approach an orchestra that even young people could easily feel comfortable with. But it wasn’t until Gladiator that the so-called “Media Ventures” sound became widely regarded as the blueprint for many film scores to follow. Thus Gladiator is in many ways a traditional Zimmer action score, with its unison brass blurbs, the doubling of orchestra with synths, predictable rhythms, and an almost new-agey feel. To provide softer and more etheral moments, Zimmer collaborated with Dead Can Dance founder Lisa Gerrard, whose vocal contributions can be heard in several cues such as ”Sorrow,” ”Reunion” and ”Now We Are Free”. Gerrard’s Arabian like wailing vocals provide quite a lot of spirituality to the music, arguably presenting the best material in the score, though it has to be admitted that after they made such a splash in Gladiator, they have since become too much of a Hollywood cliché, from Troy and Revenge of the Sith, to Pirates of the Caribbean and Alexander. Further contributions to the score include the nasal duduk solos (another future Media Ventures cliché) by the instrumentalist Djivan Gasparyan in the cue ”To Zucchabar” and additional material written by Klaus Badelt, whose career has gone up and down and mediocre for most of the time.

As such there is nothing really resembling a “main theme” in the entire score, apart from a noble, recurring melody, first heard in “Earth” that makes further appearances in “Barbarian Horde” and “Honor Him,” and a certain sombre motif usually heard in the very low ranges of the cellos and basses that appears often throughout the music. To cite the many plainly obvious influences in the music, we also get extensive, near-copied quotations of ”Mars, the Bringer of War” from Gustav Holst’s The Planets Suite (which indeed even resulted in the Holst Foundation suing Zimmer for plagiarism in 2006), along with distinctive derivations of Wagner, like the ”Natur-Motiv” from Das Rheingold in ”The Might of Rome” and Siegfried’s Funeral March from Götterdämmerung in ”Am I Not Merciful,” which also features another nearly straight rip from Gorécki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. I could even hear certain similarities with the music of Vangelis, most notably 1492: Conquest of Paradise (also a Ridley Scott film), both in tone and its overall breadth (can you say “temp tracking”?).

So okay, the score for Gladiator is not highly original, and there seems to be more temp-track love here than usual, but I would not say it is hugely distracting. No, indeed the biggest weakness in the score doesn’t come from its rather plagiaristic attitude, but from Zimmer’s insistent use of synthesized sampling and instruments, the kind providing a distinctly snorty sound when they attempt to imitate brass in particular. As it is, the hard, metallic edge of the electronics can be a little too overbearing and annoying at times, particularly in the first part of “The Might of Rome.” The main cumulative argument for the musical sound is that “nobody knows how Roman music really sounded like.” Now maybe I’m wrong, but somehow, if they were striving for a new speculatively “authentic” Roman sound, I doubt the Romans had a bunch of Yamahas lined up during their Panem et Circenses! As a notable exception, the cue ”Patricide” offers a neo-classical, string-heavy elegy with no synth-backing, and I find this to really give the music a more emotionally weighty feeling than anything else in the rest of the score (though many teeny boppers tend to say they like it the least, of course). The two great action set pieces, ”The Battle” and ”Barbarian Horde” (both reaching the length of 10 minutes) are of course highlights of the album (even with the Holst quotations) and the final four tracks are truly magical. A heavy adult choir is also used in a few places, most notably in the latter half of ”The Might of Rome” and ”Am I Not Merciful?”, that create some powerful moments, and the final ”Now We Are Free” song (performed by Lisa Gerrard) is also nice enough, though it sounds somewhat out of place with its more poppy attitude.

Now, despite my criticisms of Gladiator’s score, as well as its composer, I have to say that I enjoy the score very much. It does have its fair share of problems, but there are a number of appealing melodies, rousing excitement and, as a whole, is very well balanced between the differing styles of Zimmer and Gerrard, never sounding mixed or clashing with each other. And, when compared to the more subtle and elusive The Last Samurai of 2003, the more banal King Arthur of 2004, or the abysmal Pirates of the Caribbean series, Gladiator is really a more flavoursome score, never really sitting still for long enough to bore those with short attention spans. If the hardness of the synthesizers doesn’t bother you, Gladiator is a very rewarding score in the end. Most certainly I don’t think it is a “whooo-hoo-hoo best score like EVER,” it is something I like sitting down to for some light entertainment from time to time. Following the popularity of the original album, a second CD, ”More Music from Gladator,” was released the following year, including alternate takes, demo recordings, a bunch of dialogue and other such stuff. This second CD is really only for die-hard Gladiator and Zimmer fans and offers nothing really interesting for the average Joe (unless of course you love to hear famous dialogue bits from the film without actually bothering too see the film).

Amazon prices are as follows: both original album and the second CD retail at £11.99, while the “Special Anniversary Edition” combines both CDs for the pretty affordable £6,97, making it a better purchase than getting either one or the other separately!


Original album

1. Progeny (2:15)
2. The Wheat (1:03)
3. The Battle (10:02)
4. Earth (3:02)
5. Sorrow (1:26)
6. To Zucchabar (3:16)
7. Patricide (4:08)
8. The Emperor is Dead (1:21)
9. The Might of Rome (5:18)
10. Strength and Honor (2:10)
11. Reunion (1:14)
12. Slaves to Rome (1:00)
13. Barbarian Horde (10:33)
14. Am I Not Merciful? (6:33)
15. Elysium (2:41)
16. Honor Him (1:20)
17. Now We Are Free (4:14)


More Music from album

1. Duduk of the North (5:35)
2. Now We Are Free (Juba’s Mix) (4:39)
3. The Protector of Rome* (1:28)
4. Homecoming* (3:38)
5. The General Who Became a Slave (3:05)
6. The Slave Who Became a Gladiator* (6:14)
7. Secrets (2:01)
8. Rome is the Light (2:46)
9. All That Remains (0:57)
10. Maximus (1:11)
11. Marikesh Marketplace (0:44)
12. The Gladiator Waltz* (8:27)
13. Figurines (1:03)
14. The Mob (2:24)
15. Busy Little Bee* (3:50)
16. Death Smiles at Us All* (2:32)
17. Not Yet* (1:33)
18. Now We Are Free (Maximus Mix) (3:49)

* Includes dialogue

Music Composed by Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard
Additional music by Klaus Badelt and Djivan Gasparyan
Score Performed by The Lyndhurst Orchestra
Conducted by Gavin Greenaway
Score Vocals Performed by Lisa Gerrard
Orchestrated by Bruce Fowler, Yvonne S. Moriarty, Walt Fowler, Ladd McIntosh, Elizabeth Finch and Jack Smalley
Recorded and Mixed by Alan Meyerson
Recorded at Air Studios Lyndhurst, London
Music Editor: Adam Smalley
OST: Decca, 2000 (289 467 094-2)
MMF: Decca, 2001 (13192-2)

© berlioz, 2004/2007

Summary: A fun score that wavers between inspired and lazy in equal amounts.