Soundtrack Review: There Will Be Blood by Jonny Greenwood (2007)
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This is a review of the motion picture score for There Will Be Blood by Jonny Greenwood.
It’s funny, but whenever I think of this score I think about the controversy it stirred up. At first it was sure to be nominated for an academy award for best score and then it was deemed ineligible due to the fact that it had used some pre-existing material from his earlier work “Popcorn Superhet Receiver” and also featured music from Arvo Part and Johannes Brahms. It was an outrage for most people, but rules are rules I guess. Jonny Greenwood is a member of the band Radiohead and play pretty much every instrument ever made. This is the track list of There Will Be Blood:
- Open Spaces
- Future Markets
- Prospectors Arrive
- Eat Him By His Own Light
- Henry Plainview
- There Will Be Blood
- Oil
- Proven Lands
- Hw/hope Of New Fields
- Stranded The Line
- Prospector’s Quartet
It’s quite a short score with only 11 tracks and a total playtime of 32:58. It has gotten rave reviews all over the board, top scores which of course helped getting the public more annoyed with the Oscar committee for not letting it be nominated. I, however, am not as impressed with this as most critics are. Yes, when I watched the movie, it was really superb, it was in fact better than the movie itself I thought. The music was so fitting and so powerful, it couldn’t have been better. So I got the score and listened to it at home and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get that feeling I had when watching the movie. It remains a mystery to me how some music sound great in the movies, but not in the stereo, and vice versa.
It’s not bad though, the more I listen to it, the more I like it. Its heavy use of strings is quite powerful in its own right, and some cues are just plain fun, like “Future Markets” which is just insane. When it comes to strings I still prefer Philip Glass, but I have listened to this one far more than any other Philip Glass score. I have to say that There Will Be Blood intrigues me a lot and I desperately want to hear more scores coming from Jonny Greenwood. Is Jonny Greenwood a genius? I think he is. There, I said it, Jonny Greenwood is a musical genius, he has to be when he is so versatile with everything he does. What he has created here is quite brilliant, but perhaps out of my listening spectrum? Who knows? Maybe as I listen to it more, it will become an obsession of mine. For now though I have to be honest and give it a moderate score as I am not ready yet for Jonny Greenwood’s brilliance. Listen to There Will Be Blood by Jonny Greenwood below:
Film Review For There Will Be Blood
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Comments
Yes it certainly is. I can’t listen to it in large dosages myself, but in small portions it’s great.
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There are few soundtracks that I buy once I leave the theater. I do recall loving the feel the music gave me while watching this. It’s a shame it doesn’t translate as well without the film. I’ll have to pay attention to the music when I watch this again.
waywardjam’s last blog post..Suck It Monkeys, I’m Going Corporate!
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I liked the music better than the movie itself when I was watching it, but its the other way around with the movie vs the soundtrack outside of the movie.
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I think this is an acquired taste. Like you said, it sounds better with repeated listens, but it’s also a lot more powerful with the accompanying images.
Daniel’s last blog post..REVIEW: Standard Operating Procedure (A-)
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