Scores to films/TV shows about oppressive regimes?
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Given our current world situation, I’m thinking about doing a special webcast episode on scores to films or TV shows about oppressive regimes.
I’m looking for recommendations in that regard, preferably something more or less earthbound (STAR WARS, for example, is a bit too “out there”, even though it concerns that exact thing).
Eurythmics 1984
JNH’s Hunger Games maybe?
Darin Marianelli’s V like Vendetta
Don Davis’ The Matrix (maybe also too far out there)
Jerry Goldsmith’s Papillon
Michael Kamen’s Brazil
Gabriel Yared’s Das Leben der Anderen.
And I don’t remember who wrote the score to the TV adaptation of Handmaid’s Tale. I neither liked the show nor the score, but it worked quite well in context.
Ennio Morricone’s The Battle of Algiers
Music from the music Wendy Carlos created for A Clockwork Orange
John Tavener’s Children of Men
Morton Gould’s HOLOCAUST
Alfred Newman THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK
Elmer Bernstein GENOCIDE (documentary though)
James Newton Howard THE HUNGER GAMES moviesI don’t really remember much of the score besides working in context and the theme song but perhaps the Norwegian series OCCUPIED (Okkupert) also fits (especially in these times…). Just recently watched the third last season.
I guess many of Rozsa’s historical epics kinda qualify.
And what about Gould’s Exodus? I’ve never seen the film.
Gold’s Exodus is about the foundation of the state of Israel as far as I know. As this was founded as a democracy it rather doesn’t qualify. I also haven’t seen it. But Ridley Scott’s Exodus might be better (who wrote the score?). Just like Bernstein’s Ten Commandments.
But in the end Thor must define what he means with oppressive regimes. Does slavery count in? Then we could mention Zimmer’s 12 Years A Slave or North’s Spartacus.
Do we count in prison movies? Sleepers? Murder in the First? Alkatraz? Etc. I already mentioned Pappillon above.
But then, what about Oliver Twist? Or any movie about partiarchial structures? Scenes of a Marriage?
My initial idea was about real-life regimes, like those of Trump, Putin, Xi, Jung-un….but doesn’t have be as concrete as that. Certain sci fi elements can be added. For example, THE HANDMAIDEN was also on my mind, whether you pick the Sakamoto or Taylor.
But I suppose oppressive regimes in any shape or form would qualify, really. Including prison films.
Many good suggestions so far, by the way!
Today marks the 30th anniversary of BEYOND RANGOON, Hans Zimmer’s finest score, so I wrote this article:
It would definitely have been included in an episode about oppressive regime scores.
Tall Guy, if you’re reading, I was thinking about what I remember from your writings on your hero Shostakovich, and how his counter-culture music made him persona non grata with the Soviet regime. But do you know if that applied to some of his film scores as well? Or was it just the concert music?
Shostakovich’s film career stretched from 1927 (New Babylon) to 1971 (King Lear)- although in my opinion he should have been given a posthumous credit for Escape to Victory…
During that period, certainly up to Stalin’s death in 1953, almost everything any Soviet artist did in any genre could be described as propagandistic. If it didn’t follow the (sometimes wildly inconsistent) party lines, it either didn’t get done, or nothing further would be heard of that creator. Many of his almost forty film scores would fall into that category, being written simply to put food on the table during the various times he was classed as an enemy of the people.
After the Pravda denunciation of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, for instance, he withdrew his 4th symphony just before the premiere and worked on puff pieces to commemorate Lenin such as The Man With The Gun and The Great Citizen (parts one and two!) whilst building up to his rehabilitation with the fifth symphony. World War Two relieved the pressure somewhat, and with the Seventh Symphony and the various legends surrounding it Stalin realised his worth to the state and he was back in favour, at least tentatively.
His new found fame led to Dmitri Tiomkin’s adapting his music for Frank Capra’s The Battle of Russia in 1943, and Bernard Herrmann was approached to play the composer in a biopic, which failed due to Herrmann’s refusal to play “a cut-rate Shostakovich”.
Life for everyone got easier after Stalin, but Shostakovich was still prey to state demands for the rest of his life. You could look at the 11th and 12th symphonies as being propaganda, but he buried phrases in them that the audience would recognise as being symbolic of resistance. The 13th and 14th were song cycles wrapped up as symphonies using texts that could still have got him “disappeared”, even into the 1960s.
As you often find with Shostakovich, his public and private faces were very different when you look at his film scores. A great book on this is John Riley’s “Dmitri Shostakovich: A Life in Film”, published in 2005 by I.B.Tauris.
Thanks! Yes, I vaguely knew he was in and out with the Soviet regime, but not the details.
Of course, his music (a selection from his symphonies) was used in a later release of BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN, which is very much counter-culture and anti-authoritarian, but AFAIK, he didn’t write anything original for that.
(btw, I only have two Shostakovich scores on CD, the Naxos combo of THE GADFLY and FIVE DAYS, FIVE NIGHTS…as war/conflict-related films, I suppose they would qualify, but not sure how much they concern anti-regime sentiments as such).
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