Last time the two Johns faced each other down, Barry came out on top with his Magnum Opus score for Dances With Wolves, defeating Williams’ great-but-not-quite-best-of-his-career score for Jurassic Park. This time however, the stakes are higher and the quality has increased…
As was done in the last match up, the focus has switched towards the popular acclaim each score has received since its introduction to the public, and the enduring legacy of each score, both of which are of the highest quality and production. Barry’s score for Dances with Wolves is not his best known work – that honour goes to his efforts on the James Bond franchise, with Goldfinger and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service being the pinnacle of his contributions to that series. Even within Barry’s other style of scoring (not the flashy spy/thriller/action score, but the lush, romantic, sweeping epic score), Dances With Wolves is not the most well known of his scores. That would be the melody from Born Free, which if you don’t recognise by name, you would by its first few notes – it is one of the most covered songs in film score history.
Dances With Wolves is often featured on Classic FM, whether by request or on their long running 5pm programme Saturday Night at the Movies, so it clearly has a following, and if Born Free is the most popular of Barry’s lush romantic scores, Dances With Wolves is surely second, ahead of Out of Africa, and The Lion in Winter. The thematic prowess and heartfelt emotional receptiveness of the music has won over fans continuously for 27 years. Alongside the cinematography, the music continues to be a definitively memorable factor of Dances With Wolves. Perhaps it deserves more popular attention that it has received, but the fact of the matter is that, perhaps because of the criticism given to the film over time (accused by some as merely a Kevin Costner vanity project), Dances With Wolves is sadly not in the public’s musical lexicon as much as it deserves to be.
The story is somewhat different concerning Schindler’s List. If one were pressed to name 5 John Williams scores off the top of their head, Schindler’s List would not be the first to come to mind, but probably the fourth or fifth. Certainly amongst the world of film music critics and enthusiasts it continues to be a firm favourite, and the haunting ‘Main Theme’ has been covered by everything from piano to oboe to cello. But it was the use of the violin, masterfully played by Itzhak Perlman, that caused the music to be so closely associated with Judaism and the Jewish working class. Furthermore, due to the music’s astounding ability to cause one to be brought to the edge of sadness and grief, the melodies of Schindler’s List have become synonymous with tragic loss and courage under fire.
I think most people would agree with me for putting the music from Schindler’s List forward in this competition. My personal belief is that it stands head and shoulders above, in every aspect of its production – the melodic writing and interplay, the orchestration, the appropriateness to the picture, the performance, the ability to elicit emotion and get you as a listener to care about what happens on screen. Dances With Wolves is undoubtedly a great score, and provides us with marvellous accompaniment to the sweeping vistas of the film, but never quite taps into our hearts, or into the heart of the motion picture. Schindler’s List burrows into our hearts from almost the first notes, and doesn’t stop tugging at the heartstrings until the music finishes. It’s going forward.
NEXT WEEK: The Mission vs. Pirates of the Caribbean
Scores of Scores 