REVIEW: Soundtrack, Henry Fool (Echostatic)
- Chelsea Spear
Filmmaker Hal Hartley has an undeniable ear for music. His background as a musician comes through with the pacing and symphonic arrangements in his intuitive epics, and his movies are overstuffed with an impeccable array of music, from the icy, dreamy score and Greek chorus of pop songs found in Amateur to the bizarre adaptation of European pop in Flirt. For his latest film, Henry Fool, Hartley has assembled a crack team of previous musical collaborators, including superb singer/songwriters Hub Moore (interviewed in the July 17th issue of Consumable) and Lydia Kavanaugh, drummer Bill Dobrow, and keyboardist Jim Coleman.
Like the film from whence the music comes, Henry Fool is a sprawling mass of ideas and musical styles, some of which work wonderfully, and some of which are harsh and dischordant. Unlike his previous scores, listening to much of this outside the context of the film is unreccomended. Two of the previous incidential music collections, Music from the Films of Hal Hartley and Flirt, were beautiful and poignant in their minimalist melodies, and hearing those segments of scores was what actually piqued my interest in his movies. Henry Fool, on the other hand, contains some music that is ugly and well-nigh impossible to listen to, such as the industrial-sounding cues that set an angry or violent mood within the film. Listening to them on the CD, without the context of the images and words, the songs are annoying. They're especially frustrating when surrounded by the pure beauty and sweet melodies of some sound cues surrounding them, such as the Prokofiev-inspired bounce of "Henry Fool's Theme" and the plodding funeral march of "The Mother's Death". Especially frustrating are the songs to which Lydia Kavanaugh lends her voice. "Not Me" in particular shreds my nerves, since her etherial voice does not blend well with the whipcrack percussion, slashing guitars, and careening anti-melody.
The best reason for the non-Hartley completist to purchase this score is Hub Moore's two contributions as vocalist and lyricist. "If I Could" in particular is a poignant cry of positive change to a former lover, aided by Moore's urgent vocal and the desperate slide of the melody brings out another side of his music, a cathartic, Bob Mould-esque angle that his dreamy solo debut was lacking. If HUB was his Lunapark, then I can't wait to hear his Copper Blue.
