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CD: United 93 (2006)

 
Review Rating:   Very Good
   
     
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Label:
Varese Sarabande
Catalog #:
0-3020-66740-2-6 
 
Format:
Stereo
 
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A
Released:

June 2006

Tracks / Album Length:

10 / (43:21)

 

 
   
Composer: John Powell
   

Special Notes:

(none)
 
 
Comments :    

United 93 was the second effort and first theatrical film that dramatized the passengers' heroic takeover of United Airlines Flight 93 from suicidal 9/11 terrorists, preventing the plane from reaching its likely target - the White House, or the Capitol Building.

A prior effort from director Peter Markle was produced for the A&E Network by Fox. Flight 93 featured a music score by Velton Ray Bunch, who, like John Powell, had to do much more than underscore a straightforward docu-drama. In both cases, the composers of the feature film and teleplay went for restraint, and Bunch used mostly dramatic, understated synth pulses. With few exceptions, the score didn't really develop until the end, when the passengers took over the plane, and the huge craft nosedived into a farmer's field.

The teleplay's final act included several reaction recaps, as family members began to absorb the shock after their final phone conversations with loved ones; that approach had Bunch underscore the rather repetitive montages with more melodic material, which closed the teleplay on a fairly conventional dedication and end credit crawl.

John Powell's score is notably different, perhaps due to the tone and style chosen by writer-director Paul Greengrass. Having previously worked together on The Bourne Supremacy, Powell was no doubt acclimatized to the director's manic, sometimes distracting editing style that made the action scenes in Bourne sometimes incomprehensible, and bulldozed the drama at an unwavering tempo.

For United 93, the director used Powell's impressionistic score like a series of ambient reverberations, undulating and cresting as specific tension peaks broke into the red zone; or to periodically imply the passengers' movement towards acts of heroism and self-sacrifice.

"Prayers" opens the film with a female vocal, backed by a muted militaristic thump, conveying the awakening and implementation of the terrorists plans for the day. The cue's second half introduces an exotic melodic line, and Powell sets up the score's percussive, ambient style via distant wooden percussion clusters, and intertwined tonal drones.

The tonal and textural patterns are further expanded in "Pull the Tapes," with sounds drifting in and out of clarity. Metallic reverberations and smoothened synth pulses propel the cue, and Powell adds some intriguing retro-synth drones, eerily recalling the primordial electronics used in Apocalypse Now.

The inclusion of orchestra in United 93 is very mercurial, with strings, brass and assorted percussion sometimes placed far in front before a rapid recede, making room for waves of synthetic tones. Powell's use of atonal chords, as in "2nd Plane Crash," is another effective stylistic choice, and the clusters of synth pulses in "Making the Bomb" function as not-too subtle reminders that an evil force is slowly infecting the protective sheath around the passengers.

If one could summarize Powell's score, it's of a seething, malevolent presence at work; each stage in the terrorists' plan introduce new sonic textures - part muted techno, and part waves of percussion, and fuzzy rhythmic textures.

"Phone Calls" is one of the few cues that one can compare with Bunch's underscore, and both composers recognized that the words and performances of the actors were more potent in capturing the sadness of passengers saying goodbye during the hijacking. A solo vocal and a brief surge of strings breaks the cue's tone, before Powell adds a steady pulse and Glassian brass tones. It's classic additive and restrictive methodology, and it works by first establishing danger, secondly by offering an emotional refuge for the characters (and listeners) to vent and purge pent-up fears and sadness, and thirdly, it returns the passengers to reality, underscoring the need to act fast, and face their destiny.

"The End" initially uses sustained chords, and peripheral raps of percussion; a central core of medium and high register strings heighten the passengers' final moments, and a female solo voice, heard at the beginning of the score, returns, this time almost child-like in its sadness.

"Dedication," like Bunch's cue, acts as a recap and memorial to the lost lives. Powell focuses on tonal impressions rather than a melodic recap, thereby avoiding the tinge of melodrama that affected the final moments of Bunch's otherwise effective score.

It's a tribute to Powell's restraint that his score evokes so many of the dramatic moments of Flight 93, but United 93 may be one of a few scores that, for a long while, will possess a visceral tie to a historical event. That unforgettable resonance makes this much more than a standard soundtrack album.

 

© 2006 Mark R. Hasan

 
 
 
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