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The Quiet Earth/Iris
•
Label. ‘X’ Cinema Maestro
LXCD
9. 26
tracks
-
45:19
•
New from
Label
‘X’
is this
score
to the off-beat
sci-fi
opus
The
Quiet
Earth
(1984).
Directed
by New Zealander Geoff Murphy, Leonard
Maltin describes
the film as an “intriguing
and
extremely
good-looking
end-of-the-world saga.” one which
has
attracted a cult following. John Charles’
score sounds good too, and
in fact is one of the most
intriguing scores
I’ve
heard
in some time. Charles was born in Wellington in
1940 and brings
to his film scoring a
varied
background in composing
concert
music, playing jazz piano and conducting
both
symphonic works
and opera.
The Quiet Earth
is
not easy to
categorize.
It’s definitely symphonic
with
a sweeping use of large
orchestra,
but it’s never
bombastic
or ostentatious. At some
points
it
has a minimalist feel, especially
in
its section
for
solo
cello, bells and harp,
and
at others it exhibits the urgent sense of open
space and
melancholy evoked by the, best American
concert composers.
(In fact, the New Zealand Symphony
Orchestra
that
performs
the score recently
released a
well-received CD of music by
Samuel
Barber.)
Though
Charles’ score is not derivative.
The Quiet Earth
does suggest
the intensity
and
brooding emotion of
Barber’s music. The
haunting main theme has a
curious feel
of bluesy
Americana
to
it,
perhaps in keeping with the film’s
last-man-on-Earth
plotline, It
alternates
with a series of short motifs; a counter motif for bells and harp, an
agitated
passage in a neo-classic style, and a brief
recurring
benedictory
fanfare for brass. The score also features electronics, but used very judiciously and mostly for the sequences involving the mysterious
“effect”: the
opening “Sunrise”
and the
final “Saturn
Rising” when Charles really
pulls out
the modernistic stops—both are among the
most impressive I’ve heard in a recent score. The disc is rounded out by Charles’
score
to the television
feature
Iris,
this in a
more
intimate chamber
vein,
but still urgent
and intense, and apparently in keeping
with
the tone of this dual-leveled biography of
Iris Wilkinson, a New Zealand writer who
committed
suicide
at age 33.
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