Directors making strong characteristic decisions about the music in their films are, aside from being few in number, generally people who depend on a particular composer--directors like Steven Spielberg (John Williams), Steven Soderbergh (Cliff Martinez), and John Carpenter (himself). Michael Mann is that rare director for whom musical literacy has less to do with professional partnership than with a hunger for aesthetic exploration. From his days with Miami Vice, in which he spearheaded the integration of pop songs with a scene's motion, Mann has been relentlessly creative in the scoring of his work--setting producer Trevor Jones (a knowledgeable technophile) loose in The Last of the Mohicans wilderness and getting Elliot Goldenthal to blend electronic, hard-rock, and orchestral effects for a haunting score to Heat. The common theme is mood, at times profoundly spiritual, fashionably effete, or resolutely cold. These are the temperaments of Lisa Gerrard, best known for her work with the prototrance act Dead Can Dance, and her sometime partner Pieter Bourke. Their score for The Insider is a rich montage of paranoia and momentum, perfectly suited to Mann's moralistic corporate thriller. Mechanized drums flirt with ambient music while, soaring above, thick clouds of synthesized drones recall Peter Gabriel's fortunate work on the big screen. --Marc Weidenbaum
Michael Mann is an unconventional director, so it's entirely appropriate that the score for The Insider, his meditation on tobacco whistle-blower Jeffrey Wigand, doesn't play by the rules either. The bulk of the album is comprised of collaborations between Lisa Gerrard and Pieter Bourke, with three tracks from Graeme Revell and equally atmospheric contributions from Gustavo Santaolalla, Jan Garbarek, and Massive Attack. The result is eerie and haunting, somewhere between ambient and new age, but always evocative and cinematic. This may be a strange choice for a seemingly dry journalism tale, but it works terrifically and gives a good sense of how unusual and unpredictable The Insider is.
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