Blast from the past-future-through-pr esent-stone-age-old (The Time Machine - Klaus Badelt - Soundtrack)

Member Name: berlioz II

Product:	The Time Machine - Klaus Badelt - Soundtrack
Date:	02/08/07 (219 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Entertaining with a lot of variety

Disadvantages: Main theme quite plagiaristic and action stuff a bit too MV'ish

It is funny to note how composer Klaus Badelt has become known as a sort of action maestro after having his name appear in the first Pirates of the Caribbean film, though in reality he had about as much to do with it than Jerry Seinfeld has had an impact on the world of comedy since Seinfeld ended. It is easy to see, though, how to just have your name appended to something hugely popular is sometimes enough to give a person a real career. But despite managing to rise to more popular prominence, his scores have not really been anything that great. In fact, as of the time of writing, I can mention only two scores of his that I would consider anywhere near to be celebrated. The first is the 2005 surprise in creativity that was The Promise (or Wu Ji as the original Chinese title is called), an epic and symphonically quite intriguing solo effort removed from his usual Media Ventures/Remote Control enviroment; and the other was his first major break-through score, the 2002’s The Time Machine. Now The Time Machine is a film that closely follows the formula of “any remake of a classic film will undoubtedly suck” and this most certainly was the case for Simon Wells’ reimagining of H.G. Wells’ (no relation) story of Professor Hartdegen traveling through time and ending up farther in the future than he was aiming for, the film ultimately receiving lukewarm reviews and not enjoying a particularly wild box office success.

For Badelt, the film offered a chance to write as grandious an adventure score as he could muster, and he certainly grabbed the opportunity. If there is anything you can say about Badelt is that he does command a certain sense of dramatic authority and The Time Machine is a very good example of this. The score as a whole is basically constructed of two halves. The first half takes place in the enviroment of the 19th Century and is by far the more classical of the two. This first half introduces us to the two main themes that more or less dominate the proceedings. The first is the theme for Alexander Hartdegen, a broadly lyrical and sweepish minor-keyed melody that is almost identical with Jerry Goldsmith’s theme for The Edge from 1997. However, despite the similarity, Badelt takes the theme through some more interesting variations than what Goldsmith did with the original, having it performed on romantic piano in “Professor Alexander Hartdegen,” with epic full orchestra in “I Don’t Belong Here” and with ethnic flute in “Good Night.” The other theme is the love theme for his unfortunate girlfriend Emma, whose death prompts him to invent the time machine in the first place. The theme is very sweetly romantic and innocent, mostly relying on the use of piano and the strings in cues such as in the Christmassy “Wish Me Luck”, the tragic “Emma” and the more sweeping “Bleeker Street.” These two build the core for the more traditional elements that separate the past from the future’s differences.

The score then takes a drastic turn when it reaches the mid-point of the story and leaves the confines of the Victorian era for the far distant future, a world that has seemingly evolved back to pre-historic times. With this the music shifts away from the world of James Horner and Jerry Goldsmith for a more ethnic and electronically enhanced sound. It is here that the third major theme is presented, that for the Eloi which sounds like an African anthemic chant in the style of John Williams’ “Dry Your Tears Afrika” from Amistad, only crossed with the final “Now We Are Free” from Hans Zimmer’s Gladiator. This theme is heard three times on the album in more or less the same way (“Eloi,” “Stone Language” and “Godspeed”), and makes for some quite entertaining listening every time. On the whole, as the first half centered very much on late-Romantic lyricism with piano, brass and strings, the second half is more tribalistic with the chanting chorus, ethnic flutes, some diverse percussion and the addition of more prominent synthesizers not heard in the first half to create the alien stone age like environment. It is here that the score also gathers more prominence on the action department that sounds somewhat more familiar of the Media Ventures brand of frenetic action writing, most instantly identifiable in the cues “Morlocks Attack” and “What If?” It is not particularly bad, but it is a bit too reminiscent of The Rock’s rock’n’roll attitude to feel totally satisfying for the setting.

By the side of these action parts we do encounter some more reflective and quiet moments, most notably in “Good Night” where Hartdegen’s theme is performed with an ethnic flute to reflect the changed setting he’s in now, in the eerie “Where the Ghosts Are,” in the disconcerting “The Master” with its inclusion of more operatic choir and a statement of Hartdegen’s theme in its former French horn guise, and finally in “Godspeed” where all major themes are revisited one last time. These coupled with the action parts and the traditional romantic parts create quite a diverse canvas that keeps things interesting at all times. On the whole the score for The Time Machine is very pleasing and it has enough variety thanks to the very different settings the movie takes place in. Despite the fact that the main theme is as plagiaristic as you can get, it is handled with plenty of variation to not cause it to descend into simple rhetorical copying. And when combined that the music on the whole works really well on its own (maybe exluding some of the more beating action music), and the album’s offering of about 58 minutes of music guarantees that if anything, this is a score that is just fun to listen to. Of course Badelt borrows a lot of ideas from the likes of James Horner, John Williams and Hans Zimmer for his musical stylings, but these stylings are handled with enough individuality to not really matter. Overall, a highly recommendable album with a lot of lyrical appeal and one of Badelt’s best efforts todate.

Amazon prices the CD at £11.48.


1. Professor Alexander Hartdegen (3:25)
2. Wish Me Luck (1:21)
3. Emma (2:35)
4. The Time Machine (3:11)
5. Bleeker Street (2:26)
6. I Don’t Belong Here (3:48)
7. Time Travel (4:36)
8. Eloi (2:10)
9. Good Night (4:03)
10. Stone Language (4:53)
11. Morlocks Attack (4:23)
12. Where the Ghosts Are (1:36)
13. The Master (7:15)
14. ”What If?” (6:16)
15. Godspeed (5:20)

Music Composed by Klaus Badelt
Additional Music by Geoff Zanelli
Conducted by Gavin Greenaway & Rick Wentworth
Featured Vocalist: Katy Stephan
Orchestrated by Klaus Badelt, Jim Dooley, Tim Jones & Ramin Djawadi
Score Recorded by Nick Wollage
Score Mixed by Alan Meyerson
Score Recorded at Air Lyndhurst & Abbey Road Studios, London
Music Editor: Christopher S. Brooks
Produced by Robert Townson
Varèse Sarabande, 2002 (VSD-6337)

© berlioz, 2007

Summary: Give the dog a bone, sir.