What You Need to Know: Period pieces, dramatically viable or not, are a tough sell for me.  Same with the music.  Typically, the score inherits the period in which it is set and thus, a predictable path is set.  Well, the thing you can say for Bright Star is that it was highly unpredicatable...but for all the wrong reasons. For one, it's length is an insult; I was taken aback by how brief a time this one checks in at. Plus, you're looking at one stand alone track that is nothing but dialogue. Thus, the running time is riddled down further.

 

And about the dialogue -- hearing it in nearly ever track started to make me highly irritable, and maybe even a bit ill!  I could buy into it for a cue or two but not for the breadth of the CD.  Sadly, these spoken words cover up the beauty of Bradshaw's score, which is both poignant and elegant.  There is an emotional touch in his work that shines through the limited number of instruments he uses in the score; the violins had a stark, minimal beauty to them.  In short, I like what Bradshaw did here but I just wish that there was more of it (and less distractions to contend with).

 

When you look at the content of this CD, you can quickly draw the conclusion that this score was not an ideal candidate for a soundtrack release.  They seemed to have done anything they could to stretch this one out even to max out at 23 minutes. Whether there is more music to be heard in the movie or not, there is limited value, even for classical music fans, to buy this score given its length and use of dialogue that clutters up the flow of the score.