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THE BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY Beautiful,
contemplative music for harrowing tale A review by JAMES SOUTHALL An acclaimed film directed by Hans Petter Moland, The Beautiful Country
tells the remarkable story of a Vietnamese refugee's quest to find his parents
and the hardship he faces along the way. Produced by Terrence Malick, it's
attracted much praise. Scoring the film was Zbigniew Preisner, in his
second collaboration with director Moland after Aberdeen. Preisner
is one of the most intellectual film composers (unsurprising, perhaps, for the
composer of choice of Krzysztof Kieslowski) but has been pretty quiet
recently. He decided to shun Hollywood and work only on independently-made
films some time ago (probably wisely deciding that mainstream American cinema
was not the ideal showcase for his talents) and chooses his projects with care; The
Beautiful Country is only his eighth project of the decade, and the music
was recorded almost two years before the album has been released. He
hasn't worked on anything since. Preisner's music for The Beautiful Country is an intriguing
east-meets-west combination. Needless to say, it is a far cry from most
Hollywood composers' approaches to such projects (which is to have distinctly
western music played on Chinese flutes and an erhu, or something) - it's neither
authentically eastern nor authentically western, with Preisner adapting his own
pretty unique style to fit the film. The score is anchored around an
arresting, appropriately harrowing theme, frequently played by flute, sometimes
with violin in a kind of duet. It's a great theme which, typically for the
composer, features brief fragmentary phrases separated by brief periods of
silence, working very well indeed. Elsewhere, Preisner uses a touching piano theme, again very subtle and slow,
which is really quite beautiful; uses instruments like vibraphone, dulcimer and
alto sax to create a wonderful atmosphere, suggesting "another place"
without doing anything too direct; and frequently incorporates hand drums, again
a particularly effective device. There are one or two pieces of very light
jazz, but Preisner keeps the orchestra in place to ensure a smooth
progression. The Beautiful Country is a highly-impressive score
which builds from one place and ends up in another, with the composer
constructing the music with intelligence and not a small amount of
emotion. It's been too long since the last Preisner score; hopefully it
won't be too long until the next one. This one comes highly recommended. Tracks
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