Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

Watching Final Fantasy made my grateful that Pixar got to computed generated movies before anyone else. Had they not, I suspect we would probably be watching third rate CGI sci-fi films instead of witty, funny, moving, digital, yet utterly human family films. If it weren't for the fact that Final Fantasy was not only based on a hugely popular computer game (with a good story of its own so I gather) and that the film cost the annual gross national product of Australia to make, I don't suppose anyone would have cared either way. The fact that it was such an utterly banal, humourless, wooden, below mediocre piece of sci-fi is frankly shameful. It just proves that merely throwing money and state of the art technology at something doesn't make it good. Perhaps the biggest irony is that it probably would have been more convincing and cheaper done as live action, thus cutting out the need to animate people. For my money, the CGI didn't come across as anything special, as unlike Toy Story and its successors, Final Fantasy was attempting realism and the fact that it didn't succeed, made its falseness more distracting.
Anyway, enough ranting and down to one of the highlights of the film, Elliot Goldenthal's score. Goldenthal is becoming a dab hand at sci-fi having provided some sophisticated modernism to Alien 3, Sphere and Demolition Man. For Final Fantasy, the palette is somewhat broader, the mixture of fantasy and epic science fiction invariably being very potent when music is required. Indeed, the listener would be mistaken for thinking that happenings of Biblical importance were transpiring in many of the tracks when I suspect the on screen reality was far less interesting. This is Elliot Goldenthal doing big scoring, but in his own unique way and that means a minimum of obvious melody, but plenty of crushing brass and percussion. The rather extraordinary number of trumpet, horn and trombone players was one of the talking points before the score was released thus the full immensity of the forces is can be only fully appreciated when cranked up to neighbour irritating volume on a quality stereo.

Of course loudness does not make a score good (despite what Trevor Rabin fans may feel), but Goldenthal's compositional technique is amongst the strongest of any film composer alive so he can wield the orchestra and hair raising chorus with just the right touch as to be thrilling, but without the listener merely being overwhelmed with sound. Although less modernistic in its approach than Alien 3 or similar, several segments - most notably the extended, dense and intense Toccata and Dreamscapes - are quite difficult listening, but instant accessibility isn't really Goldenthal's forté. The more emotive and lyrical side of Goldenthal does not come to the fore often, but those moments are just as good as the more obviously impressive. From the wistful distance of A Child Recalled to the build from lyricism to ground shaking climax of Adagio and Transfiguration, the full spectrum of drama from a composer of huge skill is in full evidence for every minute of the running time.

The album closes with The Dream Within performed by Lara Fabian lending her talents to a much more successful song spin off than with John Williams' slightly ill advised For Always from AI. Spirit Dreams Inside is a passable pretty funky rock song which I suspect many will skip, but I found it rather enjoyable. Of course, neither can really compete with the score itself, but are still far better than the average movie pop songs. As with all great scores to lousy films, the music is almost certainly best enjoyed on its own terms. In this instance, I'd suggest that the film simply gets in the way of some superb music. Due to the failure of the film at the box office (albeit not without good reason), the music was passed over for Academy consideration, which just demonstrates further the farce the Oscars continue to be. Undoubtedly one of the finest scores of the year.