Everyone has their own thoughts on what the best film score of all time is, or should be. I have even changed my favorite several times over the course of my life. In order to determine the value of a score several factors come in to play. In some cases, the music is simply a background; nothing more than filler added to an otherwise dull movie. In other cases, the music is purely for the sake of emoting; telling us how we are supposed to be feeling at a particular moment. In a lot of cases, it’s actually easier to say why a score is ‘bad,’ or to even describe what makes a bad score, than it is to define what a great score should entail. Never-the-less, I am about to do just that. In my humble opinion, this film has the greatest score of all time:
THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION
The reason I have chosen this score is due mainly to two determining factors: 1) How the music aids in the telling of the story, 2) The originality of the score.
It is difficult to choose a starting point on addressing how this score succeeds in telling, or helping to tell, this wonderful story of hope. Thomas Newman, the brilliant creator of this score, used the philosophy of ‘less is more.’ Never once does the music get in the way of the movie (a problem with many scores today). Newman’s score parallels the narrative of the movie, while simultaneously telling us about each character and their journey through this narrative.
Rather than going into a lengthy essay about this score, I would just like to briefly describe two moments in the film that are particulalry powerful musically. ‘Brooks Was Here’ is the scene in the movie where we follow Brooks, the elder inmate, from his parole through to his tragic suicide. Even though Brooks has found freedom, he never allows himself to embrace that freedom, but rather chooses to lament over the familiar life that he has lost. The music perfectly captures the lonliness of Brooks through the use of very stark harmonies in the piano. Blocked chords are juxtaposed against a pedal point, and thus creates a feeling of wandering but not really going anywhere. This is exactly what Brooks is going through; he has a job, but with no prospect of advancement. He has home, but no one to share it with. He is totally alone in a world that has advanced 50 years since he was removed from it and put into Shawshank. Unable to move on, Brooks takes his own life.
It is the character Red who understands that Brooks was ‘institutionalized,’ that he grew to depend on the walls of Shawshank, even though it was a prison. Years later, when Red gets paroled, he also goes through the same living space, job and struggles that Brooks did. Thomas Newman delivers the same music for Red (‘Compass and Guns’), the same stark and lonely textures of Brooks post-Shawshank life. The music starts to change, however, once Red makes the decision to ‘get busy living.’ The initial point of musical departure from that of Brooks’ is when the oboe comes in with a pentatonic countermelody to the piano; this occurs at Soon after, the pedal point and bleak piano chords are replaced with lush string writing, that are both beautiful in their richness, yet slightly dissonant in their unsure direction. At the end of this track, when Red is close to finding his destiny (and ultimate TRUE freedom), the harmonica enters; symbolising the previous life of Red, when he was truly a free man.
At the time of its release, this was one of the most unique scores ever written. Since then, it has been imitated but never duplicated. The score features acoustic instruments and also quite a lot of synthesizer; and these two are balanced and blended perfectly. They successfully complement each other in sound and texture. The way the piano is used is so different from other scores that feature the instrument in such a prominent way. There is never a moment of virtuosity in the writing; in fact, there is no virtuosic writing or performance in the entire score. This fits the film perfectly, in that there is nothing flashy about the prison or the men in it. In this simplicity, however, is some of the most beautiful and truly moving music that I’ve ever heard in a film score. I could write for days about this soundtrack, and maybe I will at some point, but for now I encourage all of us to get acquainted, or re-acquainted, with this masterful film score.
