Thin Red Line Choir Song

[Placido Teofilo]

Youmight even want to put some space between these two mini choirs. In rehearsal it allows each half to hear how the whole song sounds if they sing to each other separately. In performance, you can place these two mini choirs to give the audience more of a stereo effect (see 7 below).

But if your singers are not that experienced, you may decide to make these small groups a little larger with more than one person on each part (for support). As you put more and more singers on each part, you will eventually end up with option 3 above which is a little more traditional.

The Thin Red Line is one of the landmark scores in the history of film music. There aren't many composers who have such works on their belt. We can talk about Max Steiner and his King Kong, Alex North and A Streetcar Named Desire (first time a film was underscored by jazz) or the triumphant return of orchestra in John Williams's Star Wars. Hans Zimmer, the composer of The Thin Red Line, has a few of such breakthroughs in his career, like Black Rain (originating a new action style), Crimson Tide (first full score in that style, Backdraft was somewhat immature). No matter how much greater or smaller landmarks happened in film music, one must be remembered. The Thin Red Line changed the character of the genre. It was appreciated years later, when its influence was of note. Today, except The Prince of Egypt and Gladiator, it is seen as German composer's biggest achievements.

The landmark character of the score is not the subject of this article, which is an essay in interpretation in context of film and its album, because, in my opinion, even in this sense, the German created an exceptional work of art. Exceptional in its artistic message, the role it plays in the film. Many factors influenced it from the collaboration with director Terrence Malick (which Zimmer holds in very high regard), to time he spent on writing the score and that process itself. Thus we will start with the facts.

Hans Zimmer was hired to score The Thin Red Line very early. With big probability one can say it was in 1997. Possibly, he was very adamant to take the project. Terrence Malick, the film's director, made three movies already and all of them are seen as masterpieces. The adaptation of James Jones's classical novel after a 30+ year break. I think that without much exaggeration one can say that Hans Zimmer was one of the first to be hired for this movie.

He received a very difficult task. Malick demanded all (or most of) the score to be written before the production started, because he wanted to play it on the set to get himself and the crew in the right mood. It's hard to say whether it were electronic demos or orchestral recordings. The director also asked him to minimalize the amount of electronic instruments used in the score and resort mostly to a live ensemble. Devoid of the context and his usual tricks, Hans Zimmer had to find a new language to live up to the very hard task. His "help" though was classical music. Renowned for his replacement of composed music with classical pieces, Malick (on Days of Heaven, most of Ennio Morricone's music was replaced with the music of Camille Saint-Saens and in his most recent The New World he uses Wagner and Mozart in many places, which led James Horner to frustration) most likely asked the German composer to refer to certain pieces, which can be noticed in the final score. Still, in one of the early scenes Gabriel Faure's Requiem is heard (the 'In Paradisum' movement) and later, during the village massacre, we can hear Charles Ives' "An Unanswered Question", replacing Zimmer's reference to Wagner's "Prelude" to the drama Lohengrin.

Zimmer started working. Malick is said to have spent the whole pre-production in Santa Monica, where he established his production office for the film in the Media Ventures complex. He and Zimmer regularly argued on the corridors, but the composer says that they were very good arguments. For help, the German composer asked John Powell (who later took over the scoring duties on Endurance, a documentary produced by Malick) and Gavin Greenaway. Later, for undisclosed reasons, much of the music was rewritten Jeff Rona, who couldn't be officially credited for, as Rona put it, "political reasons" (John Powell's and Francesco Lupica's tracks are officially mentioned in the soundtrack part of end credits and the only credited "additional music" composer is John Powell), so he invented the phrase "visceral ambience". The music was recorded in Fox's Alfred Newman studios, one of the best in Hollywood. It was performed by Hollywood session musicians (today known as Hollywood Studio Symphony). The string section is said to have been tripled. Except traditional orchestral instruments, Zimmer added Tibetan drums, bells and chimes, three harps, a taiko drum and religious chants. He aided himself with Polynesian choirs, who chant their Christian songs in a pigeon English, and slightly Vangelis-like sounding electronic instrument called cosmic beam, performed by Malick's friend Francesco Lupica. Lupica himself improvised one of the tracks, called "Sit Back and Relax".

The film itself got mixed reviews. I believe it was completely misunderstood, which led some critics may say it's inherently incoherent and not understand the shots of nature. Hans Zimmer's score though was reviewed as very good, sometimes seen as the only coherent element of Malick's movie. As we will prove, this was one of the score's objectives. Alas, The Thin Red Line ended up to be the biggest loser in 1999 Academy Awards. It got no awards despite 11 nominations (including the score). Another big loser of that ceremony was the composer Hans Zimmer, who also lost the comedy/musical score Oscar to Stephen Warbeck (the German composer was nominated for his other great score, The Prince of Egypt).

There are multiple releases of the score. The basic one of course is the official album released by RCA Victor, which consists of less than an hour of score. An interesting fact is that it was released in a different way than usually. The compiler, Gavin Greenaway, included some material that wasn't used in the final film. Those include the beginning of "The Lagoon", final part of "Journey to the Line" (the high strings), "Air" and "Stone in My Heart". A year later, RCA released an album with the Melanesian chants. It was produced by one of Media Ventures' technicians, Claude Letessier. Later, an expanded score bootleg appeared. The so-called Sakura edition is nothing more than the original release with some dialogues added. There is also a two-CD complete score, but it's not perfect either, since it features the film's sound effects in the mix. This article is based on the official release, but sometimes I will refer to the complete score, because some of the most important cues weren't released. Despite that, the official release is sufficient and definitely recommended.

Based on these facts, we can say that Hans Zimmer, despite constant arguments, had a great atmosphere to work in. With his usual tricks taken away he had to find a new language, which influenced himself and film scoring in general. It wasn't until then when his neoclassical tendencies were put in a new dimension. Lack of the film's context made him also create an abstract work, without clear references to the film's reality, which let him concentrate on its philosophical message. This is why, in my opinion, The Thin Red Line goes beyond usual film music and becomes almost a philosophical treatise. As the film shows though, this is only one of possible levels of the music's reception.

The specific process of the scoring of the film also influenced the role it plays in the movie. Creating the music before the production starts isn't a novelty in the industry. A notable example is Ennio Morricone and his spaghetti western music written for Sergio Leone. How did Hans Zimmer's score influence its context?

It'd be banal to say that usually the film story is led by the camera work. What it shows, defines the way we perceive the events and the visual elements are the narrator. In The Thin Red Line it's different. This film can be interpreted on multiple levels, from a traditional one (ie. as a war movie), psychological one and philosophical one. The director decided to trust the music. The filmmaking process was conformed to the music. This makes the score the subject of the movie.

It must be noted, that Zimmer's score has a transcendent character in context of the others. It goes beyond the happenings on screen, sometimes even against them - dynamic, dramatic and brutal scenes are often underscored by a restrained adagio. It definitely changes our perception of those scenes. It doesn't matter how many people die (which is shown by Malick with relatively little blood, often people just fall). More important is what our characters are going through, or, to be more precise, what the collective character is going through. The German composer approached the movie in a more European, psychological rather than purely dramatic, way. It makes the characters even more human (Malick, with an amazing consequence, shows both sides of the as a bunch of terrified people - not really knowing what they are doing and why; they merely want to survive).

It all would be much simpler if the film's main character wasn't a collective. Of course, the off-screen voices we hear repeat (mainly Bell and Witt), but the intuition tells us that all those reflection are shared by all the soldiers (more complicated in case of Bell, a character we seemingly know best). The composer had to address that, too. Many critics of the movie praised Zimmer for giving coherency to the movie and that's how it is. The music is beyond the story, it tells the story. One of the roles of a narrator (subject) of a literary (or film) work is to give a voice to particular characters. Hans Zimmer did more here, except giving people a voice, he creates the right atmosphere for us to listen to them.

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