The Road

「THE ROAD」は2005年の「THE PROPOSITION」と同じくジョン・ヒルコート監督による作品。原作はピューリッツァー賞受賞のベストセラー小説で、出演者はアカデミー賞ノミネート経験のある、ヴィゴー・モーテンセン、シャーリーズ・セロンなど人気の実力派ぞろい。映画を引き立てるヴァイオリンとピアノをフィーチャーしたシンプルな楽曲全17曲！
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Readers of Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel The Road may have guessed that it was tailor-made for cinematic treatment. Its bleak landscapes and distinctive rhythm, with long stretches of near silence punctuated by outbursts of grim violence, were a director's dream. By the same token, the film was a challenge for soundtrack composers Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, both Australian and both associated with Cave's punk band, the Bad Seeds. But they responded with a unique score that they performed, with a small ensemble, as well as composed. There are 17 cuts, some of them dealing with the scenes in which wandering father Viggo Mortensen and his son remember their pre-apocalypse life, and others pertaining to the story's oddly hopeful conclusion. In most of the scenes Cave and Ellis have to introduce a note of awful threat into a basically monochrome sequence of events. Their economical ways of doing this, with simple and well-timed assertions of dissonant intervals intruding on basic forward motion, completely avoid suspense cliches and, as viewers of the film may have found, work in an impressively subliminal way. The type of score created by Cave and Ellis gets ignored come Academy Awards time in favor of massive symphonic treatments, but in its way this was one of the most effective film scores of 2009.

Previous film scores by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis have been filled with a sense of atmospheric desolation that assumes tension, foreboding, dread, and ultimately violence, and preface the notion of the story on the screen. That said, their score for John Hillcoat's The Road -- adapted from Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel of a father and son's journey across the barren landscape of what is left of America -- is a shift away from that technique. The 17 cues here are filled with very slight, spare, even skeletal pieces for violin and piano, with a few brief blazing moments of dissonant percussion-driven noise that point to the unfolding terror in the narrative. These are courtesy of an orchestral string section and added percussion, such as on the freakish “The Cannibals.” These moments are few and far between, however. On “Memory,” the orchestra leads the way, evoking something nearly pastoral, but burdened by so much sadness that it is actually an elegy. The longest piece here is “The Journey”; it contains traces of the film’s musical theme, adorned with percussion and strings, and conjures some atmospheric dread and inherent disaster -- and recalls some of the pair's other work -- but even here it feels like a minor-key interlude with sonic effects designed to add tension and a mournful tinge. “The Cellar” is the most arrestingly dissonant piece with its aggression and dynamic explosiveness, but it's a brief cue of less than a minute and a half. Most of what’s here is simply quiet and dignified, and serves the cinematic narrative as a bridge between father and son, who experience the many things they encounter through different eyes. As music, however, without that visual context, it’s so minimal that it feels like a series of pieces that never quite resolve. Ultimately, when heard apart from its cinematic counterpart, it is the least memorable of the scores Cave and Ellis have recorded together, but is a pleasant, if not riveting, listening experience. ~ Thom Jurek

ショッキングな問題作、ヴィゴ様主演のあの映画のサントラはニック・ケイヴ！

『ザ・ロード』(2009)
サウンドトラック

音楽　ニック・ケイヴ＆ウォーレン・エリス
監督　ジョン・ヒルコート
主演　ヴィゴ・モーテンセン、コディ・スミット・マクフィー

あの『ノーカントリー』のコーマック・マッカーシーによるピューリッツァ賞受賞の原作の映画化。崩壊後の世界を舞台に父と息子がサバイバルの旅に出る。”敵”は、食糧として人間同士を狙う生き残り人間たち・・・。
崩壊後の世界の滅んだ美しさをスペインの名撮影監督ハビエル・アギーレサロベが捉える。マッカーシーが時の人になる前に原稿時点で映画化に向けて奔走していたというヒルコート監督は、アップリンクが配給した異色の近未来バイオレンス『亡霊の檻』を監督していた人。寡作だが、これまでのフィルモグラフィでも”新世代のサム・ペキンパー”的な立ち居地か。そして音楽は、その『亡霊の檻』に出演もしていたニック・ケイヴとウォーレン・エリス。このコンビは『ジェシー・ジェームスの暗殺』など、フィルム・スコアにも興味津々のよう。心象風景のような非メロディ的なアコースティックサウンド。しかし、その中の優しさ、恐ろしさ、が乾いたサウンドの中でも、微妙に表情を見せる。T・ニューマン、バーウェル、マルチネス系サウンドの方にお薦め。 (C)馬場敏裕