And When Did You Last See Your Father? (OST)

Director Anand Tucker pronounces himself well satisfied with Barrington Pheloung's score for his film And When Did You Last See Your Father? in his sleeve note in the booklet for the soundtrack CD. Pheloung, as much a classical composer as a writer of movie, TV, and theatrical background and incidental music (a major credit is the theme for the Inspector Morse series), employs the London Metropolitan Orchestra in creating a series of warm, romantic cues full of sweet string parts and delicately played piano themes. His music is interspersed with several classical pieces: Vincenzo Bellini's Casta Diva aria from the opera Norma, sung by Janis Kelly; the Andante section from Johan Sebastian Bach's Keyboard Concerto in G Minor BWV 1058; and the Adagio section from Franz Schubert's Piano Trio in E Flat Major D. 897. They fit in well with the original scoring, the whole creating the impression of a heart-warming movie. Surprisingly, however, the film (which, by the way, lacks the "And" in its onscreen title) is hardly a Hallmark card on celluloid. On the contrary, this adaptation of Blake Morrison's best-selling memoir (also referred to as a "novel" in the CD booklet, though it seems to be, as they like to say in the movies, "based on a true story") is a bittersweet recollection by a member of the Baby Boomer generation of the transgressions of his father, with an emphasis on the "bitter." Blake (played by Colin Firth) returns home in his maturity for his father Arthur's (Jim Broadbent) final illness, which triggers a series of memories, depicted in flashbacks, of Blake's upbringing, during which the sincere, sensitive, introspective youth suffers from the dishonest, insensitive, and extroverted behavior of his dad, not to mention being forced to witness adulterous behavior with a family friend. The story might as well have been called, "Why I Hated My Father." In this sense, Pheloung's lovely, melodious, classically based background score comes off as endlessly ironic when heard in the film itself, an effect not at all apparent when it is only listened to on the soundtrack album. ~ William Ruhlmann