OVP: Score (2002)

OVP: Best Original Score (2002)

The Nominees Were...

John Williams, Catch Me If You Can

Elmer Bernstein, Far from Heaven

Elliot Goldenthal, Frida

Philip Glass, The Hours

Thomas Newman, Road to Perdition

My Thoughts: We're moving further into the 2002 races, and my goal will be we will have these articles pretty much every day or so for the next few weeks as we head into 2022.  As I mentioned a few articles ago (links to all past articles are at the bottom of this page), my goal headed into 2023 is that these ballots will be a big part of the blog as we try to ensure that we make some real progress on this project (and not just get 2-3 ceremonies done a year cause then I'll truly never finish!).  With that said, we're going to get into the second music category of 2002, which features some legends, including one getting his final nomination in this category.

We'll start there.  Elmer Bernstein became an icon at such a young age (crafting film scores for movies like The Magnificent Seven and To Kill a Mockingbird while he was still in his thirties), it's hard to remember that he was still alive until 2004, and was conducting as late as that era.  Far from Heaven was his final nomination (of 14 total), and his first in nearly a decade.  It's a wonderful sendoff, though.  The film occasionally suffers from "the score is a character," but I don't have a problem with that when it's super-stylized like Far from Heaven is.  There's something so luxurious about the way he sets the mood, recalling a Douglas Sirk film, but doing so indulgently rather than with a straight-face.  It's a fine line the movie plays always, but it's extremely successful from the conductor's rostrum.

Philip Glass is also quite notorious for making his score a character in his films, but again it works in a movie that's super stylized like The Hours.  Glass's score is inarguably the most iconic of these five, frequently used outside of The Hours in montages or trailers, and it's easy to see why.  It starts out floating and continues almost like a separate concert that's happening in the life of these three women (in one day).  I adore it-I think it's gargantuan in the best ways, and the violins & strings dominate beautifully.  It helps that I like the movie (if I didn't, this would be easy to call bombastic in context), but I think they meld well, which is something that you need in a movie.

This is the case with Eliot Goldenthal's Frida score, which I found distracting.  "Burn it Blue" we talked about in our last article, but I thought that fit even though the music wasn't impressive.  Goldenthal's total score, though, I found underwhelming in that it repeats itself too much and inserts itself needlessly in quieter moments.  It also becomes its own character, but in a bad way, feeling like it's making up for a lack of plot development in the central third of the movie, rather than underlining major points from the acting & writing.

It's worth noting that generally Oscar likes bigger scores, ones that insert themselves over the film itself, as that's kind of the raison d'être of our final two nominees.  Thomas Newman I'm less forgiving of this with than John Williams (the latter being someone I almost always like).  Newman's score for Road to Perdition works quite well.  It's not super generic (sorry, but that's something that will happen to him), giving us a recurring, simple but expressive theme, and making sure it doesn't take away from the larger movie.  There are aspects of this movie, like The Hours, that you will hear regularly in film trailers, which is a sign that it evokes a sense of cinema.

Our final nomination is for John Williams, one of the cavalcade of scores he put out in 2002 (along with Catch Me, he also was behind Minority Report, Harry Potter 2, and Attack of the Clones that year).  I'll be honest here, even though this is good (fun, playful, bouncy) it's the least of the four scores.  I think Williams is at his best when he's composing epic tales for the screen-it's why being paired with Lucas & Spielberg was such a good idea.  But Catch Me feels too repetitive, and doesn't feel as organic to the film as your average Williams score does.  This isn't bad music (at all), but it's a situation where judging both Williams & Oscar nominees on a curve makes you get picky.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Grammys eligibility window for the best film score nomination is not the same as Oscar's so oftentimes you'll see films from two different years getting citations.  In 2003, the Grammys went with Spider-Man amongst the 2002 releases, but it lost to The Fellowship of the Ring, while in 2004 The Two Towers won (all three of the Howard Shore scores would win in the quite competitive Grammys), beating out 2002 contenders Catch Me If You Can, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and The Hours.  The Globes don't split their years so they had Frida winning against 25th Hour, Far from Heaven, The Hours, and Rabbit-Proof Fence, while the BAFTA's went with The Hours against Catch Me If You Can, Chicago, Gangs of New York, and The Pianist.  In terms of sixth place...it has to be The Two Towers, right?  Both of the other two installments not only were nominated, but they won...outside of Jackson at director, possibly the film's weirdest snub.

Films I Would Have Nominated: I easily would've included Shore's score.  While the first film has the main theme, this one might be the finest collective score that Shore put together in the six-film Middle Earth series.  I also think that if I'm going to pick a John Williams score (and you must with him putting out four and he being my favorite composer) I think I'd pick the more action-oriented Minority Report.

Oscar’s Choice: Frida won, the most egregious win that Harvey Weinstein ever got out of his awards machine, as most people at the time figured this was going to be a race between either Bernstein getting a swan song victory or Williams finally getting his sixth statue (which he's still waiting for two decades later).

My Choice: Not even close for me-The Hours is one of my all-time favorite film scores, and it is impossible to deny even if I'm mixed on Glass on the whole as a film composer.  Behind it we'll go Far From Heaven, Road to Perdition, Catch Me If You Can, and Frida in the back.

Those are my thoughts-how about yours?  Is everyone kind of aligned that Frida was a miscalculation?  Who is your pick if you're not going there with Goldenthal, given the number of legends in this category (are you siding with me or do you prefer Williams, Newman, or Bernstein)?  And how did Howard Shore get skipped here?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 2002: Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2002

Past Best Score Contests: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020