This finally arrived in the mail last week. Does anyone who’s seen the movie even remember it at this point? The quality of the film aside, I am always thankful for more John Williams, especially when he’s not squandering his talent on the diminishing returns of “Star Wars” or Indiana Jones.
What’s remarkable, Williams having written and recorded this at the ages of 93 and 94, is how good it is. This is not one of his scores in “heroic blockbuster” mode. The car chase cue is one of the least remarkable tracks on the album. The train scene everyone raves about, for some reason (it makes no sense), is presented in the film without music. Rather, it is the emotional moments and the moments of wonder (in the music, if not the film) that resonate and remind one of what the movie is so sorely lacking.
The film opened on June 12. I ordered the CD from Waxwork Records on June 18. The soundtrack was shipped exactly one month later. This should not be construed as a slam against Waxwork. It’s just the way things are now, and I can’t see how it helps sales. If the product is not available for purchase by your average, moderately-interested person on the street, either immediately in a brick-and-mortar shop or for two-day delivery from an online retailer, how can you expect more than a few thousand sales, mostly to hardcore John Williams fans and die-hard film score collectors? I guarantee Williams’ name alone would generate many times that amount, if only they would make it easier for people to buy it. As it is, it’s not even available on Amazon, save as a digital download.
Quality-wise, I have no qualms. This is a polished product of the sort that used to be put out by the major labels. The sound is immediate, without seeming to be right in your face; the choral contributions and electronic elements blend well with the acoustic instruments. I must say, the bass is quite striking, to a degree I haven’t really noticed in previous orchestral soundtrack releases – although I confess my consumption of newer movie music has diminished, most of my purchases tending toward music of decades past. Considerably past, in terms of most of the classical stuff. If you want to really feel the lower registers – the cellos, double basses, and percussion – “Disclosure Day” has a unique, appealing sound. More important is the content, and there’s plenty here, in terms of emotion and lyricism, for me to enjoy.
Alas, physical media are not the priority they once were. I miss the days of just being able to walk into a record store and buy a soundtrack when it arrived a week or two before a film’s release. Now, if you want the CD, you have to do your research, find out who is distributing it, and jump through the hoops of preorder and postal delivery. The digital downloads for “Disclosure Day” weren’t even available until the day of the film’s release. I really don’t understand this strategy. A successful soundtrack album has always been one more tool with which to sell a film. How many repeat viewings has Williams’ music inspired? But all that is peanuts, I suppose, in a world in which a movie has to make $300 million in order to turn a profit.
When I called Waxwork to request a few tracks to air on one of my radio shows in advance of the official soundtrack release, I was told it wouldn’t be possible; there would be a rights issues, and I would have to contact Universal directly. Everything has become such a corporate labyrinth over the past decades, it’s like trying to infiltrate the Illuminati to get permission from a studio. Don’t even get me started on Disney. At least at Waxwork someone actually answered the phone, and he was normal and pleasant, competent and human and real, the way people used to be. The prospect of having to deal with Universal was not appealing. In the end, I decided to wait the extra week and just air some tracks from the digital download. So yeah, I bought the soundtrack twice.
All this jealously-guarded secrecy surrounding every aspect of the film, and the final trailer basically gives away the entire movie…
My summation is spoiler-free: I can describe my viewing experience as one of anger, at the start, softening, by the end, to disappointment. At least Emily Blunt and John Williams were good, though I have to admit, in the scenes where Spielberg tries to be more contemporary and dystopian, the score does seem a bit out of place. As I say, Williams does emotion and wonder very well. Watching “Disclosure Day” was a reminder of how much those two qualities are lacking in movies today. Even Spielberg movies, apparently.
I can’t believe I am living in a world where you can’t get a CD of a John Williams soundtrack. The guy who broke all records for soundtrack sales and singlehandedly revived the orchestral film score with such verve that it carried into the 21st century. His appeal transcends the collectors’ market, or at least it did. But since everyone’s awareness about anything, beyond what they are fed on social media, seems to have diminished, you have to be 50 years old to remember a better world.
Disney has to be the biggest group of idiots, judging from its handling of Williams’ last soundtrack, for “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” – a far less interesting score, save for the delectable “Helen’s Theme,” which is pure golden age, though evidently not appreciated by everyone. As has been the case with the current score, clearly different people expect different things from John Williams. If it doesn’t possess “Jurassic Park” bombast, they’re incapable of recognizing or remembering a theme, apparently. At its best, the music for “Disclosure Day” is gorgeous. I’ve already commented on how the opening track, “Listen,” taps into the spiritual world of Vaughan Williams’ “Tallis Fantasia.” Already, right there, I am sold.
Others have pointed out a kinship between one of the tracks and Williams’ music for Spielberg’s “A.I.,” which, by the way, is easily my most-hated Spielberg film. And while I’m at it, he really missed the boat on creating a prescient sci-fi classic about honest-to-goodness, now-in-the-headlines, anxiety-provoking A.I.! While “Disclosure Day” doesn’t make me violently angry the way “A.I.” did, both movies make me question why I ever liked Spielberg to begin with. But then I remember “Jaws,” “Raiders,” “CE3K,” “E.T.,” and a few others.
“Disclosure Day” is no “Close Encounters,” for as much as it wants to be, and it is certainly no “E.T.” Say what you want about Spielberg’s remake of “War of the Worlds,” at least it was coherent. In 2 ½ hours, “Disclosure Day” has plenty of time to tell its story. But the ideas the screenplay seems to think are the most profound don’t cut very deep, at least in the way they are handled, and plot holes so glaring a ten-year-old child would recognize them are brushed off with a single line of dialogue, if that.
Despite some nice visual touches and some potentially interesting, sadly underdeveloped ideas, there’s more talk than show in what is, after all, a visual medium, and one this director has always exploited better than just about everyone else.
“Disclosure Day” often doesn’t make sense, and I couldn’t understand what any of the critics saw in it, until I realized we have very few actual critics who understand movies anymore, or even basic storytelling. The film proves that, if Spielberg wants to speak to the heart, if he wants empathy and wants us to “listen,” then John Williams is indispensable.
This soundtrack gives me a lot of pleasure, and moves me in a way the movie most definitely did not.
Category: Film Reviews
-
Full Disclosure About “Disclosure Day”
-
Is There Still an Audience for “Ben-Hur”?
I devoted one of my posts the other day to news of a limited-time revival of “Ben-Hur,” back on the big screen, courtesy of Fathom Entertainment. The film has been showing at select theaters across the country over the past four days, with today being the last. If you’re at all interested in seeing it in its new 4K restoration, search for theaters in your area by clicking on “get tickets” at https://www.fathomentertainment.com/releases/ben-hur-2026/. Screenings tonight will likely begin sometime between 6:00 and 7:00.
And let me tell you, the film looks great. Also, I don’t know that it’s ever sounded better. Miklós Rózsa’s fanfares and choruses soar, the clatter, thundering horse hoofs, and roar of the crowd during the chariot race thrill, and the earthquake following Jesus’ crucifixion terrifies.
Granted, the film is four hours long (presented with a brief intermission), but it is an absorbing story told on a grand scale. Why, then, was I the ONLY PERSON IN THE THEATER when I saw it last night? I mean, this was the most-decorated film of all-time, with a record-breaking 11 Academy Awards. It was also the highest grossing picture since “Gone with the Wind.” Everything about it is immaculately rendered (no pun intended).
Were people put off because it’s an old movie? By the length? By the religion? Because it was a work night? Here, the film was over by 9:50.
Most likely, they stayed away because it doesn’t have Ryan Gosling in a spaceship. Also, it’s less demanding to stay home and stream “content” as background to scrolling on the phone and texting friends.
If any of these is the case, I feel sorry for those people. But I am also concerned for the future of everything I hold dear. A large segment of the population, it seems, possibly a majority, lacks the curiosity and the attention spans of our parents and grandparents, who might have considered this a deeply satisfying, even transformative night out.
Concerning the religion, “Ben-Hur” is a peculiar movie. On the surface, it has a Christian outlook (Lew Wallace’s book bears the subtitle “A Tale of the Christ”), but the hero, blue-eyed Charlton Heston as the Judean prince Judah Ben-Hur, is proudly Jewish. Of course, the conflict in the film is more political than religious. Ethnic distinctions are drawn mainly along the lines of those in occupied lands who bristle under their Roman conquerors. There’s one scene wherein the Romans make a sneering remark about a proposed chariot race with Judah. “A Jew?” one remarks, incredulously (sponsored by an Arab, no less). But the Romans, in general, are a proud, supercilious lot.
The other day, I mentioned an alleged gay subtext (according to Gore Vidal) in the establishing scene between Judah and his childhood friend, Messala (played by Stephen Boyd), which does exude a certain, unusually ardent quality, though things very quickly go south as the men’s allegiances drive a wedge between them. However, given that Judah’s later relationship with the Roman general Arrius (played by Jack Hawkins) deepens into an equally unguarded affection, it would be easy to chalk it up to simple phileō. This was, after all, the ancient world.
That said, if there’s a more homoerotic mainstream American movie, I can’t think of it. There are half-naked, well-oiled men everywhere. They stop just short of snapping each other with their towels. And if it’s an historical or Biblical epic, you can bet Heston will be standing around in a loin cloth for at least some of it. It must have been in his contract.
The film is adapted from a bestselling novel by Civil War general Lew Wallace, the most-read American novel in the period between “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and “Gone with the Wind.” Wallace claimed not to be particularly religious at the time he took up his pen, but on completion of the manuscript, he found he had become a believer.
The story is really a mash-up of “The Count of Monte Cristo” and a Jesus movie. Jesus pops in every once in a while, always viewed from the back of the head, as Rózsa’s score strikes a mystic tone. But the film is not really about Jesus, or rather it isn’t JUST about Jesus, as much as it is about getting in touch with your own humanity and embracing your better angels. Yes, the ideals advocated by Jesus point the way, but Judah himself, as a good and thoughtful person, grapples with the complexity and corrupting nature of the impulse to revenge. Heston delivers a nuanced performance, a career best, that conveys much of his character’s conflict and evolution through his thoughts, facial expressions, and physical bearing, as much of it is not explicit in the dialogue, though certainly supported by the compassionate exchanges in Judah’s encounters with Jesus.
Interestingly, Judah recognizes the extraordinary in these silent encounters, but he remains a Jew to the end (as opposed to converting to Christianity). Throughout the film he touches his mezuzah reverently, even tenderly, when entering his house. When his family’s fortunes plummet, still he adjusts the scroll and carefully tends to this symbol of his identity and faith. At a point, he covers his head and prays for forgiveness for his desire to seek vengeance. Whether or not he embraces Christianity beyond the action of the movie is unclear, but I think not. Nevertheless, he is transformed.
In a way, Jesus is an external symbol of Judah’s inner goodness. Or perhaps, putting it another way, Jesus becomes a catalyst for Judah’s self-awareness. A Roman early in the film remarks that Jesus teaches that God exists inside every one of us. (“It’s quite profound, actually,” he adds, with a far-away look.) Whether or not you are a “religious” person, whether you are Jewish or Christian, the film should still work for you. It’s interesting that, for such an earnest, at times histrionic presentation, it manages to satisfy when viewed from multiple perspectives.
Judah’s journey leads him through physical trials and into the emotional abyss. But he does believe in a higher power. He makes it clear several times throughout the film, most especially when he tells Arrius he cannot believe that God would keep him alive in the galleys for three years only to have him drowned at the bottom of the sea.
It’s an inspiring movie, not least of all for all the craftsmanship that went into it. The starfield in the film’s prologue, as the Three Magi travel to Bethlehem to pay homage at the manger, is magical. The kings, captured in profile, are like a Rembrandt brought to life. The stable scene is touchingly reverent, but the chance cavorting of a rambunctious calf saves it from stiffening into sanctimonious kitsch. And then the credits! My god, Miklós Rózsa’s music!
There were no computers back then, remember, so everything you see was made by hand. The sets, the expert matte paintings, the costumes on the cast of thousands. Those nine chariots racing around the arena with their teams of frothing horses are real. Stuntmen risked life and limb, and Heston and Boyd can be seen in some of the shots actually maneuvering their rigs. I know it’s a hackneyed phrase, but they really don’t make ‘em like this anymore!
I should add, the film is not for ironists. It is absolutely in earnest from beginning to end, but as I suggest, it’s open to a range of interpretations. It is the visual equivalent of reading a book. It feels like a literary experience. Whether or not it reflects Wallace’s original in that regard, I cannot say. I have yet to read it, but I’ll get around to it one of these days. For now, and as has been the case for decades, I hold the movie very close.
Heston, Boyd, Hawkins, Finlay Currie (as the king Balthasar), and Frank Thring (who plays Pilate as a consummate politician) have never been better. William Wyler (who was Jewish) was one of the most skilled Hollywood directors of all time. Google him and just look at his credits. He directed all kinds of pictures, from “Wuthering Heights” and “The Heiress” to “Roman Holiday” and “Funny Girl,” with very few of them being less than wholly satisfying. Several of them, including “The Best Years of Our Lives” and “The Big Country,” are among my all-time favorites.
You have one more chance to catch “Ben-Hur” on the big screen in its 4K restoration. I don’t care how good your system is at home. Watching it on your couch with distractions of the phone, the refrigerator, and easy access to a bathroom is not the same experience. Go, and prepare to be overwhelmed. -
Raising a Pint to Barry Fitzgerald for St. Patrick’s Day
I try to watch “The Quiet Man” every year on St. Patrick’s Day, whether I need it or not. If, already a quarter of the way into the 21st century, this confirms that I am hopelessly out of touch, so be it. Someday, someone will pry this twee, politically-incorrect Irish fable from my cold dead hand.
I’m working my way through the recent John Williams biography by Tim Greiving, and although I am having some major issues with it (the book, published by Oxford University Press, reads like a first draft, to put it kindly), it is obviously written with love and chock full of valuable information. I know Williams always speaks fondly of Victor Young, but it was interesting to learn that Young’s music for “The Quiet Man,” which Williams saw in the theater in 1953, was one of the first film scores that really made him sit up and take notice and made him consider the possibility of writing for the movies.
I guess this makes sense, especially with having everything laid out chronologically in a biography. Progressions become clearer, and from the start Williams was always a gifted arranger. I mean, his first Academy Award was for his arrangements for Norman Jewison’s film of “Fiddler on the Roof,” and it was far from his first musical. Even apart from the movies, Williams was arranging for and accompanying Frank Sinatra, Vic Damone, Frankie Laine, and so many others. So he would have had a connoisseur’s appreciation of what Young achieved in his score for “The Quiet Man,” which positively overflows with inspiring arrangements of folk and popular song and sentimental ballads.
On a related note, for a long time, after having run across some clips, probably on YouTube, I’ve wanted to see a film called “Broth of a Boy.” It stars Barry Fitzgerald (who plays the “Quiet Man’s” insatiably thirsty Michaeleen Oge Flynn) as the oldest man in the world. With that premise, how could it miss? Unfortunately, the film is seemingly unavailable in the United States – only intensifying my desire to see it – and the reviews I’ve read ranged from mildly charmed to middling. So I certainly knew not to expect a classic.
Every year, around St. Patrick’s Day, I search for it, and what do you know, last night I found it on YouTube! The transfer is barely adequate, but you know how old movies are from the United Kingdom. Even the Alastair Sim version of “A Christmas Carol” (released in the U.K. as “Scrooge” in 1951 – a year before “The Quiet Man!”) looks like it was made in the 1930s. I don’t blame the technology; I blame post-war austerity.
Anyway, “Broth of a Boy” looks older than its years, as for that matter, does Barry Fitzgerald. His character is supposedly 110. Fitzgerald died in 1961 at the age of 72. But here, in 1959, he looks tired. Or maybe he was just hammered the whole time.
Be that as it may, if you’re a “Quiet Man” fan, I think you will find much to enjoy. The humor and characterizations are of the same cloth, and both films employ actors from Dublin’s Abbey Players – the National Theatre of Ireland – although, as far as I can tell, Fitzgerald is the only common denominator between the two.
Alas, the screenplay isn’t as consistent or sharp, and the scenes are not always the most imaginatively captured. I sure do miss John Ford’s direction and Technicolor. The score, by Stanley Black, will never be mistaken for Victor Young. The film feels longer than its 77 minutes, but if you are a “Quiet Man” die-hard, you might want to give it a shot. Or have a few yourself, if you know what’s good for you. -
“The Choral” Misses Its High Notes
The trailer for Ralph Fiennes’ new film, “The Choral,” which I’ve been seeing over the past month or so, whenever I go to the movies, has proved to be a bit of a bait and switch. An English period piece set during World War I, it appeared, from the marketing, it would be an inspirational story about the power of music.
Yeah, the war was a bad time, lives were destroyed, and the flower of England’s youth mowed down at the Somme. But the trailer features just enough humor to make it seem like something it’s not. I caution you not to go into it expecting a charming story of idiosyncratic British resourcefulness in the tradition of “The Full Monty,” “Kinky Boots,” or “Calendar Girls.” I’d have been happy had it been “Chariots of Fire” meets “Brassed Off.” (The latter is about England’s colliery brass bands; “The Choral” is about its amateur choral societies.)
Primarily, I got the impression that the film was going to explore musical performance as a kind of therapy for damaged soldiers returning from the front, but it really does nothing of the sort, beyond the suggestion being made in one scene, and then it’s never revisited.
Fiennes is excellent as always, as the displaced, disgraced choral director forced back to England from a satisfying career in Germany, on account of the war. His scrupulous German allusions and quotations from passages of Goethe and the “St Matthew Passion” (which the English of course sing in English) do nothing to endear him to the locals, who view his foreign connections with suspicion. After a rock comes crashing through a window during a rehearsal, it is suggested perhaps the choir should sing something else. It is to the choristers’ collective dismay that they realize that every composer they offer happens to be German – even honorary Londoner George Frideric Handel.
This is when “The Choral” pulls its rabbit out of the hat, and we discover that the rest of the film will center on an amateur performance of Elgar’s “The Dream of Gerontius.” What a very happy surprise!
Alas, the happiness is short-lived. Naturally because of the war, budgetary constraints, and not least the varied ability of the singers, concessions have to be made. The result is a “bold” reimagining of the oratorio that seems about as edgy as something out of “Dead Poets Society.”
Inevitably, Elgar shows up, and both his character and the casting (he’s played by the estimable Simon Russell Beale) are totally wrong. Nothing I have ever seen or read about Elgar leads me to believe he was squat, portly, and petty. Couldn’t the filmmakers even have given him a decent push broom mustache?
Perhaps it won’t bother viewers who aren’t so close to the subject, but for me it kills the movie. My guess is that the marketers kept the “Gerontius”/Elgar angle out of the trailer, because there are about five people in the U.S. who would have any idea who or what they are, much less want to see a movie about them.
More broadly, the screenplay by playwright Alan Bennett (“The Madness of George III,” “The History Boys”) is a mess, with few of the many dramatic ideas introduced in the first act (war trauma, suspicion of espionage, wounded vanity and squabbles among the singers, betrayal in love, an interracial romance that never raises an eyebrow, the plight of the homosexual and the conscientious objector in 1916) are ever satisfactorily resolved.
Like real life, then? I think it was just weak. Still, hats off to Bennett for writing another screenplay at the age of 90!
Bennett is clearly interested in English music. He wrote a play, “The Habit of Art,” about the relationship between W.H. Auden and Benjamin Britten. Ursula Vaughan Williams (Ralph’s widow) was a personal friend and appears as a character in “Lady in the Van.” So I am especially sorry that this late attempt to dramatize the import of Elgar and his music is a swing and a miss. Perhaps with a different actor. If only C. Aubrey Smith were still with us!
“The Choral” is not a bad movie. As a classical music lover, I would desperately like a film of this sort to succeed. However, if like Fiennes’ choral director I’m to be brutally honesty, I must acknowledge that it fails to hit any of the high notes.
——–
View the trailer here: -
Bergman’s Enchanting “The Magic Flute”
From time to time, I guess even Ingmar Bergman needed a break from existential dread. How else to explain his delightful adaptation of “The Magic Flute?” Originally intended for television, Bergman’s playful and inventive 1975 film of Mozart’s 1791 singspiel had a lot to do with setting me on the path to become an opera lover.
The conceit, to set the action as a live performance in the historic Drottningholm Palace Theater (a reproduction, since there were concerns about the actual theater safely accommodating a film crew), is disarming and inspired. All the stagecraft is laid bare. The scenery is evidently painted plywood, the animals are all people in suits, and the characters pause from time to time to hold up little signs with moralistic aphorisms on them as they sing their arias.
Bergman’s film begins outside the actual theater and then enters the hall during the overture to register the facial expressions of a audience members as they anticipate the curtain rising. Most especially the camera lingers on the eager face of an impressionable young girl. It’s evident that the director would like us to experience it all from her perspective, through a lens of innocence.
By contrast, we’re also taken backstage, to glimpse Papageno, fallen asleep and nearly missing a cue, Sarastro between acts studying the score to “Parsifal,” and one of Monostatos’ minions reading a Donald Duck comic book.
Sure, there are moments of despair even here, as a couple of the characters contemplate suicide (we also get a memorable vision of hellfire), but it’s all dispelled in a decisive victory of good over evil, an endorsement of universal brotherhood, and a resolution of unalloyed joy.
It was Mozart’s librettist, Emanuel Schikaneder, who suggested during rehearsals that Papageno stammer in excitement at the recognition of his desired Papagena, in their famous duet. Here’s what Bergman does with it.On Mozart’s birthday anniversary, I think it’s time to revisit this film.
Behold! Here it is on YouTube.
Tag Cloud
Aaron Copland (93) Beethoven (95) Composer (114) Film Music (141) Film Score (143) Film Scores (255) Halloween (94) John Williams (195) KWAX (229) Leonard Bernstein (103) Marlboro Music Festival (125) Movie Music (156) Mozart (89) Opera (212) Philadelphia Orchestra (89) Picture Perfect (174) Princeton Symphony Orchestra (108) Radio (88) Ross Amico (244) Roy's Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner (290) The Classical Network (101) The Lost Chord (268) Vaughan Williams (103) WPRB (396) WWFM (881)