Diario → My Favorite Albums: #91 Clint Mansell’s “The Fountain”

I have never listened to a great deal of scores for films, as I tend not to take the soundtrack as a separate element. However, when I saw “Requiem for a Dream” I was haunted by the score, which added such tension and emotion to the scenes that ran behind it. When I bought the album, and learned it was Clint Mansell and the Kronos Quartet that did the work, I was impressed enough to seek out more of their collaborations. A few years ago, when The Fountain came out, I was delighted to see Darren Aronofsky had again chosen Mansell and the Quartet to do the film’s score. Though it was not as vital to the movie as it was in Requiem for a Dream, the score to this film is a wonderful and dynamic piece of music.

Built around the theme of the movie, we find a score that is designed to bring to life the haunting of a person in love, building from the myth’s of man to the lowness of the world to the lifted strains of the Heavens and back again. Starting with “The Last Man” the listener hears the slow, low string work, building around the main line in minor lifts. It is a haunted passage, almost meant as an ending, but since it begins the album, a mood is set in melancholia. Moving into “Holy Dread!” we are brought into the heart of the story, bringing the clanging bells of the past in and then building around a clattering line of strings. This moves the world of the music away from the haunted eternalness to a more earthly place. This is then built into “The Tree of Life” which continually rings in louder, higher pitches that build the tension of the mission within the music. This however, crashes down again into “Stay With Me”, which brings the listener away from the mythical build of “The Tree of Life”

“Death Is a Disease” churns slowly over and over in a haunting fashion, reinterring the quest them of the music, which in turns builds into the lifted “Xibalba” which conjures images of the heavens with its interspersed chants. This slowly falls back to Earth and is again interrupted by “First Snow” which has another haunting melody, however taking a more epic sound to build the quest. “Finish It” ends this questing part of the music, leading in to the climax, ending in such harsh tonality. “Death is a road to awe” builds so much tension that crashes in the dramatic chorus at the end; a assailing of the Heaven’s themselves, falling finally in the coda “Together We Will Live Forever” bringing the story’s attempt to reach the Heaven’s full circle to the Earth and Death.

Perhaps this is a hard album to approach if you haven’t seen the film, but like some of the best of classical music, there is an internal tension and plot line brought out by the dynamic use of the instruments. And since it has such a great internal structure, it is amazingly cohesive. What a love about an album like this, is that it can bring its own story together over the instrumentals and make me feel so emotional with just instrumental work. I hope Mansell and the Kronos Quartet continue to work together, building such elaborate musical landscapes.

Favorite Track: “Death is the Road to Awe”