This is the testimony of a TRUE lover of film music.

Only the music isn't even playing, those kinetic rhythms just keep thumping in my head.

*thump*

*thump*

*thump*

*thump thump*

And I yell into the quiet night, "Damn you, Goldsmith!"

Jason and Tim - it saddens me that you guys aren't particularly fond of this one. I mean, honestly - we do have unique personalities and preferences, but (also) in all honesty, this is one of the greatest action scores every written for film. I may appear biased, but this is an unbiased commentary: Total Recall is, without a doubt, a symphonic suite of complexity unlike most the world has ever seen or heard. On top of the great melodies, fun, fast-paced percussion, and wonderful dissonance, lies a multi-layered canvas of sound that, when listened to in detail make for an exhilirating ride. Hearing everything come together, gradually and more powerfully with each progressive movement, simply blows me away every time I listen.

This is why it's one of the greatest. Jerry put massive amounts of thought into his composition - and I guarantee you that is something many composers don't go to the trouble of doing. I mean, I don't discount other composer's work - no - but Jerry Goldsmith went the EXTRA mile. I can't stress enough the complexity of this score and how stunning of an effect it has as a whole. Brad Wills will back me up on that (if he's around to read this).

There's something to be said for simplicity, but complexity, when done right, can be just as powerful. Total Recall is a living, breathing example.

Jeron

As for TOTAL RECALL, I loved "The Dream," "The Mutant" and "End of A Dream" when it first came out, but found much of the rest of the material too abstract -- I might have felt differently if I'd liked the movie better. (I always adored the arguably even more difficult PLANET OF THE APES partly because I love the movie -- it's even the score that got me interested in film music to begin with, and I certainly would have bought that album even before STAR WARS had I understood soundtrack albums existed even BEFORE that!)

As with many of Goldsmith's more complex works, TOTAL RECALL grew on me considerably through repetition, and now it's one of my favorites -- huge, dense and incredibly ambitious. I DID wonder if the Expanded version would simply sound like more of the same old same, but it's a brilliant expansion which gave me far more understanding of what Goldsmith was getting at with his various motifs and ideas.

P.S. Total Recall isn't sleeping music. Listen to Mozart clarinet concertos for light sleeping music. But I rather listen to Mozart awake!

Total Recall is amongst my top 10 all time favs. The dream-like melodies, the fast paced action, and the over-all beauty of the thing makes this one of Sci-Fi's greatest accomplishments in music. Though I can't think about it as deeply as some, I still appreciate it for what type of score it is, and what Goldsmith had to work with as far as the over-all cinematic experience was. Arnold running around in Mars thinking that he's somebody else isn't much story to go with. I'm sure that the book gave Goldsmith more to work with than the actual film, though I've never read any of his own notes on the project.

As I ramble on, just pretend that you've never seen the movie and sit back and listen to this score. You'd be amazed at what your mind can come up with

The track called "The Mutant" is great. I can't stop listening to that cue when I put the score in the player. It fits perfectly with the scene. I'm always in AW (sorry, don't know how that goes or how it is spelled) when I hear it. The rest of the score is great action music. I didn't really pay attention to the music before the Deluxe Edition came out, but when I got it I couldn't really put it down.

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Originally posted by TimT:
Well all I can say is the truth.
Total Recall is unecxiting to me. I consider a good action score to be something that gives me a real adrenaline rush such as ID4, Cutthroat Island, Merlin, Dark City, Predator, Earaser, The Mummy just to name a few of my favorites.
The Main theme of Total Recall, which actually took me about 8 listens to grasp turned out to be really lame.
I believe you when you say Goldsmith put alot of thought and creativity into it, but still I don't like it.

[Message edited by TimT on 01-25-2001]

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Let's keep in mind that you aren't supposed to like it - film-music is written for the film, not for CD.

It's no criticism of Goldsmith and his brilliance to say that the work stinks when ripped out of its intended context.

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Let's keep in mind that you aren't supposed to like it - film-music is written for the film, not for CD.

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I am told how groundbreaking it is and how its the first if its kind, etc., etc...

Put it still leaves me cold.

I suspect you'll do with Total Recall what I do with PotA. Put the CD away, Shake your head trying to figure out what everyone likes about it and pull it out an play it the next time someone tries to tell you why you should like.

Jer

(Zimmer?? I think I'd rather have my head cut off by a snookered bowling ball. )

Jeron

PS - The "ick!!" is a joke, of course.

As for PotA, I still believe that this abstract music helped to get me ill a couple of days after I bought the CD. It wasn't until I saw the film that I discovered what a masterpiece the score is. I still don't find it easy to listen to the score on CD, just like Goldenthal's Alien³, but I consider them both masterpieces.

I think what people who don't like the score are responding to is the lack of a melodic, "heroic" theme in the work (something you get in the Rambo scores, for instance), and the sheer density of the writing that comes across as "noise" on first listen because the complexity and the sophistication of the writing simply can't be digested in one pass (and ironically it DOES do everything it needs to do within the context of the film--even forcing certain subconscious reactions and conclusions to what's being seen). It's kind of an added layer of value you get in most Goldsmith scores--for his own entertainment he builds all these interrelationships and signals into the music that take many listenings to discover. It's one of the reasons I can listen to Goldsmith's scores literally hundreds of times while I often tire of other scores after a few spins.

It IS a matter of taste and some people will never like Goldsmith's more atonal, "intellectual" sound, although to me if you don't like this stuff you're really ignoring one of the fundamental, core elements of this composer's work--he's not all about Rudy or The Mummy.

That is it for me as well. I love it (PotA) in the movie but away from it, it just doesn't work for me.

Thankfully, Total Recall does work for me!

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Originally posted by MWRuger:
That is it for me as well. I love it (PotA) in the movie but away from it, it just doesn't work for me.

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Personally speaking, I regard Goldsmith’s TOTAL RECALL as being a superb film score, and a fascinating composition in its own right. Goldsmith catches the flavour of the movie perfectly, as he did with Verhoeven’s subsequent BASIC INSTINCT, but here also manages to create a remarkably detailed composition, rich in thematic development and orchestrational depth.

TOTAL RECALL was one of the biggest and best of the cycle of new-styled action movies (that were themselves inspired by such movies as FIRST BLOOD, ALIEN and THE TERMINATOR), with their muscular and likeable heroes, snarling comic-strip villains, wildly imaginative stories (and yet with a grounding in reality, with bullets replacing laser beams etc), ground-breaking special effects, perfectly choreographed action sequences, and a refreshingly realistic quota of expletives. Such movies as ALIENS, COMMANDO, PREDATOR, DIE HARD, LETHAL WEAPON, THE RUNNING MAN, ROBOCOP, RAW DEAL and RED HEAT masqueraded as dumb comic-strip action movies (and some of them were little more than that), and yet underneath the deceptively simplistic veneer, there was often much intelligence, creativity and moviemaking skill to be enjoyed.

Hence, such movies as these had a universal appeal that helped to redefine modern cinema….filmmakers realized that this was what the paying public wanted to see, filmmakers realized that people wanted to be entertained, and ever since movies (even outside of the action/sci-fi genres) have been made with a similarly great energy, inventiveness, wit and vitality, recapturing the all-out entertainment value of 30s and 40s cinema. The unprecedented popularity of cinema during the past ten years or so, that came about largely because of the aforementioned ‘light-hearted action movies’, has been instrumental in allowing all areas of cinema to thrive. If cinema is generally popular, people are more likely to go to the cinema out of habit, thus movies that may not have received such large audiences in the past, are now enjoying massive exposure.

Ever since TERMINATOR 2 (a poor movie in my opinion), many of the sci-fi action movies have tended to lose their freshness and imaginativeness. Although TOTAL RECALL was not a brilliant movie (it was very good, mind you), it is still infinitely superior to the jaw-droppingly incompetent THE MATRIX, a movie that put me in mind of TOTAL RECALL, not least because of the Goldsmithian score. However, cinema as whole continues to thrive by pushing out high quality movies that are made primarily and unquestionably to entertain. Any secondary motivations on the part of the filmmakers are quite rightly not allowed to interfere with the entertainment value of the movie. Fortunately, the day of the risible and impotent ‘message-movie’ is well and truly past.

Goldsmith’s score to TOTAL RECALL is a supremely confident and accomplished mixture of electronics and orchestra. Having been somewhat overlooked during the late-‘80s, when newer composers such as Horner, Silvestri and Poledouris were being given many of the plum assignments, Goldsmith burst back onto the scene with TOTAL RECALL, THE RUSSIA HOUSE, GREMLINS II and BASIC INSTINCT, successful and diverse scores to grade-A movies that seemed to herald a new maturity in Goldsmith’s approach to scoring and his skills as a composer – on this evidence, one could have hoped to see Goldsmith flourish during the ‘90s and beyond. Of course, it wasn’t to be. Although Goldsmith has maintained his A-list status as a film composer, and has scored one or two good films, when one reflects on Goldsmith’s ‘90s film scores, and considering his obvious potential, one could only describe his general output as being adequate. Anyway, I go into more detail about ‘Goldsmith’s Catalogue of ‘90s Movie Scoring Mediocrity’ at the “Goldsmith’s LAST ORDERS” thread.

Though the main thematic material employed by Goldsmith in TOTAL RECALL may not be his strongest or most original (some of the action material puts me in mind of Sondheim’s A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM (of all things)), it is the way in which the thematic material is presented that is so accomplished.

Too much has been made of the link between the opening bars of TOTAL RECALL and Poledouris’s CONAN theme, the similarity is there (and probably intentional), but only briefly. The main theme proceeds with a wonderfully smooth fusion of orchestra and electronics, and the secondary ‘dream’ theme provides the perfect introduction to much of the score’s agenda. The orchestration is fantastic. All manner of electronic devices rebound off of some dextrous brass playing. But it is never just noise for the sake of noise, every note is put to good use and makes the album a fascinating listen time after time, as well as enhancing the score’s effectiveness within the movie itself.

The rest of the score is mainly made up of ferocious, but almost always witty, action music, with occasional interjections of the ethereal ‘dream’ music. The exceptions to this are the mesmerizing ‘Mutant’ cue, which is quite simply one of the greatest pieces of music written for film, and a brief and waltz-like ethereal cue based on the ‘dream’ theme heard as source music during the movie – a brilliant device.

In my opinion, the weakest part of the score is the climactic action cue that was largely deleted from the movie – strangely, many regard this as the highlight of the score. To me, this cue is too monotonous and acoustically clumsy to make for successful album consumption, though in the movie it may have worked well enough. Indeed, almost all of Goldsmith’s action writing during the ‘90s seems to have been based on a slowed-down version of this cue, before his ‘Ice Chase’ from CHAIN REACTION saw Goldsmith simplify his action music still further. A pity that such a great score as TOTAL RECALL should also be remembered as the primary source of inspiration for much of the alarmingly simplistic action material that Goldsmith employed throughout the ‘90s.

I suppose I just have to be a die-hard Goldsmith fan to get ecxited on this one.
What did I miss?

NP- The Golden Voyage of Sinbad - Miklos Rozsa ****½ /*****

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Originally posted by TimT:
What did I miss?

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Apparently the entire thing.

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Originally posted by H Rocco:
No biggie. He said himself he's not a die-hard Goldsmithian.

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But why would I have to be?
I admire the man alot, but I wouldn't kiss his feet.