THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS (1996)

With the immense diversity found in composer Jerry Goldsmith's music across his career as a film composer, it sometimes can be an entertaining game to guess how he might have scored the same film at a different time.  Often it's the genre pictures - science fiction, fantasy, action/adventure - that provide the most intriguing subjects and I think that 1996's THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS fits the bill.   In listening to the album recently, I decided to devote a post to my thoughts on it.  While it's not in my top ten list of Jerry Goldsmith scores overall, I happen to consider it one of the highlights of his projects in the Nineties. 

The movie, directed by Stephen Hopkins, is based on a strange and harrowing event in 1898, when a construction engineer, named John Patterson, from the British Army is dispatched to East Africa to build a bridge across the Tsavo River in Kenya.  During the project, two lions terrorize the workforce, proving themselves man-eaters immediately.  The lions are named "The Ghost" and "The Darkness" by the locals.  Eventually, Patterson, played in the film by Val Kilmer, tracks and kills the two lions, however in the movie he is aided by a hunter originally from the States, played by Michael Douglas.  While the film itself may not be well-remembered or highly regarded, for sure the music is an element that warrants attention.  I wanted to examine this score in its proper filmic context but also look it in the context of Goldsmith's overall oeuvre.

 

Interestingly, Goldsmith's score orbits around three central ideas, which are often combined for maximum effect.  His main melody is broad and bold, voiced by brass in an English major mode, while rhythmic counterpoint is provided by a jaunty Irish motif on flutes.  The third element are sampled African voices, singing, calling and shouting, punctuating in both motivic and percussive gestures.  Essentially, the first two musical ideas represent Patterson, an Irishman working for the British East African Railway, his own persistence working in concert with the bullish confidence of 19th century Great Britain, all the while immersed in the striking and exotic wilds of East Africa.  In a way, it's comparable to Goldsmith's three-part musical summation of General George S. Patton in the 1970 hit PATTON.  There, he characterized the complicated and contradictory Patton through echoplexed trumpet triplets (representing his belief in reincarnation), organ chorale (representing his faith) and the famous march (representing his life in the military).  This approach to one individual seems to be expanded to summarize an entire movie's plot in THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS.

Now, returning to play the game of how Goldsmith might have scored this movie at different points in his career, let's first travel back twenty years earlier.  Examining his projects in 1976, we find Goldsmith building to one of his most inspired periods, the late Seventies.  THE OMEN, THE WIND AND THE LION and LOGAN'S RUN are brilliant, unique works from this specific year, each one a highwater mark of its respective genre with long-lasting effects on subsequent scores. Had THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS emerged as a project then, I imagine it would have more in common with those aforementioned scores, still being fully orchestral, perhaps bolstered by exotic percussion but with the harsh dissonance heard in much of his music of the era.  Outside of ALIEN in 1979, that dissonant quality eventually was supplanted by the Romanticism he explored later in the decade and the first half of the Eighties. 

 

By 1986, electronics had more fully entered his palate.  They had been a part of his music for quite some time, but beginning with UNDER FIRE in 1983 the synth element shifted more prominently to the forefront.  Goldsmith had even composed his first all-electronic score with RUNAWAY.  At this time, main themes, motifs and ostinatos were often carried by synthesizers instead of the orchestra, though his music was still just as complex and engaging.  Had THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS been scored in '86, I think the attacking lions might have been characterized by odd electronic sounds, akin to what we heard in his music for GREMLINS and LEGEND, bolstered by the adventuresome orchestral quality of KING SOLOMONS MINES.  One could argue that with the story being a period piece set in the 19th century that only an acoustic score might fit, but in the 1980's Goldsmith still seemed fascinated with applying synths to any genre, as found in the medieval tale LIONHEART and the 50's era basketball drama HOOSIERS.

Suffice to say, that if the movie had indeed been produced twenty or even ten years earlier, it wouldn't have looked or sounded as it did in 1996.  Plus, Goldsmith wasn't one to provide the same sound for each film, even within the same genre or series, but I still find it interesting to wonder nonetheless, just going by his changing musical focus each year.  His growth as an artist all while still applying his talent and craft to movies over forty-five years make for a fascinating study, especially since his own voice is clear from the outset.

By 1996, after mainly steering clear from action/adventure films for several years, he was beginning a renaissance of sorts within the genre.   He had streamlined his sound.  The electronics were mostly dialed back to provide only color or pace as he composed for a more standard symphony orchestra arrangement.  He now showcased a preference for sweeping, major key themes, voiced broadly by strings and horns, perhaps awakened by his success with his music for RUDY in 1993 or just studios requesting further accessibility for general audiences.  Regardless, THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS provided him an exciting and expansive canvas on which to musically paint with these new hues.

While some long-time fans of the composer felt unmoved by Goldsmith's scores of the Nineties, I happen to love a great deal of it.  This score in particular is an absolutely entertaining slice of his new predilections, combined with slices of his experimental side.  His thoughtfulness emerges in how he mixes the Irish, English and African musical idioms together, then pits them against the hollow, sometimes rattling sounds characterizing the lions.  Just as twenty years earlier, when music from that 1976 pointed to even greater examples closing out that decade, Goldsmith followed up THE GHOST AND DARKNESS with some marvelously engaging scores to cap off the Nineties.  THE EDGE, AIR FORCE ONE, LA CONFIDENTIAL, THE THIRTEENTH WARRIOR and THE MUMMY all display the best qualities of his then-current style with aspects of what was well-established for him.   In a funny way, this somewhat reflects the story of THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS as well, in which modern bridges are built across well-traveled lands and new techniques combined with old wisdom prove potently successful.

In a neat twist of fate, when I moved to Chicago in 1998 and visited their renowned Field Museum, I was able to see the actual lions, which are on permanent display there.  Narration before the end credits mentions this fact, but at the time I had no clue that two years later I'd be see "The Ghost" and "The Darkness" up close and personal.   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucokjaOlr0I