Gustavo Santaolalla - Brokeback Mountain [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]
![Brokeback Mountain [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]](/images/Brokeback-Mountain-Original-Motion-Picture-Soundtrack-B000BEZQ18-L.jpg)
|
List Price: Our Price: $4.44 You Save: $14.54 (77%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: Music CD See more new music releases 
|
|---|
Buy this Music CD at online store in your country
Canadian Music Store
Canadian Music Store
Free Music Notes for Brokeback Mountain [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]
Free Music Review: One Of The Year's Best Soundtracks
Hit: 5 Stars
I stumbled upon this soundtrack at a record store recently & decided to give it a shot, as the roster of artists impressed me. I'm glad I made my purchase. This soundtrack is easily one of the year's best.
There are a number of distinguished country artists performing new tracks, some written specifically for the film. Willie Nelson is first up with a gorgeous cover of Bob Dylan's "He Was A Friend Of Mine." Emmylou Harris also turns in a poignant performance on "A Love That Will Never Grow Old," a beautiful song written specifically for the film by Argentinian musician Gustavo Santaolalla (who provides the film's score-- more on that later) & lyricist Bernie Taupin. I hope this gets some Oscar consideration!
Mary McBride, Teddy Thompson & Jackie Greene give nice performances in ballads also written for the film by Santaolalla/Taupin. The strength of these songs are impressive, especially considering the fact that they come from an Argentinian guitarist & a pop/rock lyricist. These songs sound like they belong in any classical country canon.
The only tracks that weigh down the album are Steve Earle's "The Devil's Right Hand," & Linda Ronstandt's Buddy Holly cover, "It's So Easy," both recycled hits for the artists in 1987 & 1977, respectively. They break the mood of the album & just sound out of place here.
Also somewhat out of place, but just simply delightful, is Rufus Wainwright & Teddy Thompson's cover of Roger Miller's "King Of The Road." The track doesn't even appear in the film, but it's inspired & downright fun.
But it's Rufus Wainwight's solo track, "The Maker Makes," that is the highlight of the album for me. It's a beautiful, twangy, heartwrenching little ballad that's performed on the piano. I get the chills each time I hear it! I'm a big fan of Rufus & Teddy Thompson, so I may be biased, but they too succeed in creating country songs that transcend their singer/songwriter limitations.
The tracks from Santaolalla's score start to sound kind of similar-- stark guitar instrumental interludes-- but they no doubt capture the essence & emotion of the film. I'm only familiar with his work from the Motorcycle Diaries (which was right up his alley), but he seems to segueway into American westerns seemlessly & with much grace.
Just about all the songs and instrumental cues on this album are huge achievements in conveying the emotional themes of the film: love, loss & longing. It's a soundtrack full of passion that transends musical genres. These aren't just country & western songs-- they're love songs.
Free Music Review: The Music of Love, Loneliness, and Loss
Hit: 5 Stars
Set in the 1960s and 1970s, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN presents the tale of two emotionally conflicted gay men, a painful love affair, and the emotional wreckage visited upon them and their families over the course of two decades. A remarkably complex and serious film, it is greatly buttressed by Gustavo Santaolalla's quietly effective score, which includes several haunting instrumentals, a few original songs, and a number of songs from the period.
Santaolalla's most effective work for the film occurs in the pure guitar instrumentals: for the most part these are simple chords, sometimes echoed as if from a great distance, extremely evocative of the vast physical and emotional spaces on which the film dwells. Simple, elegant, and painful, they were powerful additions to the film and they stand alone well on their own.
Equally effective are "A Love That Will Never Grow Old" and "No One's Gonna Love You Like Me," both of which were specifically written by Santaolalla for the film. The first is performed by Emmylou Harris, and she gives a typically flawless vocal that bespeaks of quietly simmerly passions; it has, I think, become one of my favorites among her work, and the Bernie Taupin lyrics are memorable for their great simplicity and sincerity. In the context of the film, "No One's Gonna Love You Like Me" is a low-key honkytonk song, something of a musical throwaway--even so, Santaolla nails the period sound; it sounds very much like something Patsy Cline or Kitty Wells might have performed, and vocalist Mary McBride gives it full period charm.
The remainder of the soundtrack is a mixed bag of period music, some of it drawn from the jukeboxes of the day. Linda Ronstadt is an always welcome voice, and her version of Buddy Holly's "It's So Easy To Fall In Love" is well-selected for this particular story; Steve Earle's "The Devil's Right Hand" is a classic of it's kind. Willie Nelson contributes a nice rendering on Bob Dylan's "He Was A Friend of Mine," and the Roger Miller standard "King of the Road" gets a notable overhaul courtesy of Teddy Thompson and Rufus Wainwright; Wainwright also offers the darkly powerful "The Maker Makes."
Like most film soundtracks, there is little in the way of a unified musical statement--after all, the purpose of the music is to support specific moments in the film--but the score for BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN not only recalls the film extremely well, it does strike an overall mood that bespeaks of love, loneliness, and loss without drifting into cliche. Fans of the film will find it indispensible.
GFT, Amazon Reviewer
Free Music Review: Hauntingly Beautiful
Hit: 5 Stars
This is a very beautiful score that complements a soundtrack where the two main characters are laconic men of the West who speak little, move slowly, and live intensely. The women in their lives are powerful as well, but also do not always speak a lot.
The scenery is spectacular, and the music reflects it as well as the interplay of the characters as they interact in, within, and against it.
The interval music--"Riding Horses," "Snow," "Brokeback Mountain," and "Wings" are where Santaolalla excells. These pieces perfectly encapsulate, permeate, and surround specific dramatic intervals in the film. Although they are very brief, hearing them immediately brings back images and scenes that were also very skillfully captured visually. Additionally, the music brings back the emotional reactions of the individual to the characters, the places, and the story as they were in the theatre, seeing and listening to the film.
Fans of country music will enjoy the honky tonk tunes and beautiful ballads. Although eminently current musically, they are typical music of that time and place and also serve as backdrops and foils for the lives of the various characters as they unfold before us. Although they were played in the background in the film, as stand alone pieces in the soundtrack their subconscious message becomes very clear. A love ballad heard when one of the characters is dancing romantically with his wife or girlfriend really expresses what is or should be happening if the two men were actually together. The songs of love lost are plaintive as only a country song can express. Again, they are mainly meant for the two men who were never really able to be fully together.
This is a painful story of love that was never able to fully express itself and a society that would have and may have killed one or of both of the men if they had openly tried to live together as a couple. The larger theme strikes a universal chord although this is a story of love thwarted between two men who themselves never really realized that what they felt for each other was truly the love of their lives.
It is no surprise that this composer won the Oscar for Best Score with this soundtrack. What is surprising is that Mr. Santaolalla, who is from Argentina, was able to zero in on the musical ethos and pathos of a story, characters, and time so far removed from his own personal experience. However, as this score is the product of a musical genius, there is probably little room for actual surprise at what he has produced.
Free Music Review: Heartfelt Soundtrack For a Heartbreaking Film
Hit: 5 Stars
As a gay man AND a fan of country music, I am absolutely thrilled with this soundtrack, which is all I could hope for and more. The instrumental pieces are hauntingly beautiful, and certainly have me re-living the experience of the film each time I play it. Of course, this is what a good soundtrack should do. I intend to see the film again shortly to see how all the music fits in, now that I have so much if it in my mind.
While I am particularly delighted with the participation of Willie Nelson and Emmylou Harris - both of who are among my favorite country artists - there are some wonderful surprises in the soundtrack. Rufus Wainwright also scores big - real big - with his stunning version of the gospel / love song, The Maker Makes, and his King of the Road is not as out-of-place as some reviewers have suggested (and yes, the song is heard - albeit briefly - on the actual soundtrack of the film, but it is the original version by Roger Miller and not the re-recording that is used in the movie). As stunningly beautiful as "A Love That Will Never Grow Old" (Emmylou Harris) and poignant as Willie Nelson's rendition of the Bob Dylan's "He Was a Friend of Mine" are - and they are both great - I must admit that the winner may very well be Teddy Thomson's I Don't Want To Say Goodbye, a gorgeous ballad written and performed in a traditional country style, complete with a haunting fiddle and steel guitar. The achingly romantic lyrics are a capsule snapshot of the overwhelming themes of the film - that love is not always found where we expect to find it, and one cannot chose where the heart will lead.
Ditto for the upbeat but heartbreaking rendition of I Will Never Let You Go by Jackie Green.
Most of the music is extremely appropriate for a love story - and even more so, a gay love story, which Brokeback Mountain most definitely is. And the few songs that arguably do not evoke a love story certainly evoke images of cowboys and the West. While these characters may not reflect my life (an urban gay man) they speak for thousands of gay men throughout history who have had to silence themselves even when they could not silence their feelings. These are two people who would have had a great life to compliment their great love, if only society did not make them ashamed of their feelings, and force them to hide in the shadows of a closet. Their story is a tragedy in every sense of the word, and the music could not have been more thoughtfully laid out or more effective.
Highly recommended.
Free Music Review: It Is The Film
Hit: 5 Stars
I can't put my finger on it...
Is there anything in recent history...other than 9/11...that has brought people to the social microphone, telling their tales, bearing their souls, and just rejoicing at type on a page and images on a screen.
This soundtrack captures all the love, lust, pain, heartache, longing, release, and ultimately sadness and transcendence that is Brokeback Mountain. It may be the touchstone movie of the first-half of the first decade of this century and millinium.
Jack and Ennis are, at their core, two strangers who fall deeply, and unforgetably in love. It comes as much as a shock to the two of them as to us, the viewer, judger, identifier, and, in the soundtrack, listener. Every song moves the narative forward.
Those first 2 guitar tones...the mood is set. "He Was a Friend of Mine" is Ennis's love song to his lost life-half that may or may not have known before his death, by accident, on a lonely Texas road.
The Brokeback tracks trace the development of Jack and Ennis and the relationship that they didn't seek but found themselves irreversibly caught up in.
"I Don't Want to Say Goodbye" is Jack's love song to Ennis as he recalls those near perfect days on Brokeback Mountain that they never returned to.
"A Love That Will Never Grow Old" fills me with all that this fragile, amazing, special relationship reflects...each of us should read these lyrics and remember them when we venture out into the world...that primary relationship is most important, no matter how it manifests itself.
"The Wings" which makes only two appearances...has Jack realizes that his hope for a live-in relationship is not to be but his love for Ennis exists...he reaches out and strokes Ennis's cheek as this melody starts the first time...then it spans several short but telling scenes.
The second time is of course in Ennis's trailer...the shirts, the final scene out the window to the lonely, sad prairie...the tears in Ennis's eyes stick with us as he pledges a pledge that only he and Jack know and we the viewer are not to know, as it should be.
Music is an amazing thing and it is used in Brokeback Mountain to its fullest.
"The Maker Makes" is so perfect. The first time, after the emotions of the shirts and everything that came before it, Rufus just captures it all in his longing, heartfelt, yet hopeful vocal rendition...an amazing reason to stay through the credits.