About the Soundtrack: "Les Deux mondes" features music by Composer Richard Harvey, who is probably best known to soundtrack fans for his work on TNT's "Animal Farm" a few years back. Some of you may also remember his work on the miniseries "Arabian Nights," which was released around the same time. While the latter featured mostly respectable underscore, it was his work on "Animal Farm" that really caught my attention. Since then, he has been mostly working on the foreign circuit, writing scores for films that are relatively unknown to us here in the States. Such is the case with "Le Deux Mondes," a film I had not heard of until I saw the title on iTunes. Thankfully, unlike some of his other recent works, at least this album is available as a downloadable purchase, which is how I was able to access it.
What You Need to Know: After a slow moving, repetitive year in 2007, listening to this score reminded me why it is that I love film music so. Richard Harvey delivers music at such a high level with this release that it simply outshines most of what I've heard in the past calendar year. And after all the tunes I've listened to in that span, I think that's saying something.
The general context of the film centers on a French tradesman who travels back in time and liberates an oppressed civilization. Seems like a nice setup to write a score! In addition to the music-friendly premise, it felt as though Harvey had the creative freedom to take the writing in any direction he saw fit. All one needs to do is take a listen to the first track of the soundtrack to realize that an original adventure waits ahead.
While I am singing the praises of this soundtrack, it didn't start off so positively. After the aforementioned quality of the opening track, the next handful of cues are primarily underscore material, offering background music that isn't too compelling. As it turns out, Harvey was just laying down the groundwork before the adventure really started up, and when it did, the score sparked to life.
Enchanting, original and unique are probably the best words to describe the score when it gets cooking. Harvey combines strong thematic writing with interesting, other worldly instrumentals to produce the type of outcome that's been missing from the ranks in recent times; a score that's purely original and captivating. The finest compliment I can pay, on that note, is that I lost all sense of time when I was was listening to this soundtrack. Gone were the track titles and the running times for each cue; I was simply swept up into a world of grandeur and nothing else mattered.
The best moments of the score occur in the midsection, in tracks 9 through 13, with each cue offering an unrivaled listening experience. There is a strong element of fantasy music represented here, offering regal motifs and inspiring melodies. The remainder of the score keeps an interesting appeal to it, but never quite reaches the summit of the aforementioned cues. The final track ends with an original song that reminded me of something we might have heard from "The Dark Crystal," and I mean that in a complimentary way.
Yes, fans, it's been quite a long time before I found music to be genuinely uplifting such as this and I am plenty glad to have found this score. Now it's your turn.
