As an
aside, Swift was also a famed parliamentary critic, and his sarcastic 'Modest Proposal' suggested to the English landowners that the Irish Famine might be
solved by the Irish eating their own children. This kind of dark, biting humour
and irreverent contempt is something that is challenging to adapt to screen,
especially since a contemporary audience would not be familiar with many of the
timely things that 'Gulliver's Travels' critiques.
The 1996 adaptation attempts to breach the gap by using a framing story. Gulliver returns to his family to find that ten years have passed. His position has been taken over by a man whose only interest is power. When Gulliver attempts to explain where he has been, his rival commits him to a lunatic asylum where he becomes addicted to laudanum (opium). Through this framing story we see the 'real' world in all its unjust splendour. Through the stories Gulliver tells, we see its critique.
The 1996 adaptation attempts to breach the gap by using a framing story. Gulliver returns to his family to find that ten years have passed. His position has been taken over by a man whose only interest is power. When Gulliver attempts to explain where he has been, his rival commits him to a lunatic asylum where he becomes addicted to laudanum (opium). Through this framing story we see the 'real' world in all its unjust splendour. Through the stories Gulliver tells, we see its critique.
Why begin
a soundtrack review with this political background? Like the screenplay, it is
vitally important to understand this context if we are to understand the music
Trevor Jones has composed for the screen. Like the text, it is suspended between
fact and fantasy, statement and critique, home and distant shores... and yet,
it presents us with something else. While the rest of the narrative leaps from
country to country, the music flows between them with graceful ease. As far
afield or uncanny as Gulliver's drug-fuelled Cassandra Truths become from our
grasp of the 'real', the music remains a constant reminder that these two
halves are indeed a part of the same satirical whole. In this way, we become as
situated an audience as Swift's original readers.
The main
theme (first heard in "Gulliver Returns Home") is built from a
sequence of rising and falling arcs, reminiscent of the waves to which we return
again and again in the story. Above this (and sometimes played on its own),
there is an ongoing suspension, built from stacked chromatic notes falling from
airy strings. It is a curiously melancholic sound with no resolution for several
bars. It could be described as the main theme in terms of its motif; it has a
groundless, drifting feeling that reflects Gulliver's drifting life after the
shipwreck. Beside the 'wave' theme, this groundless sensation sets us awash on
the same seas as our hero. However, the groundless themes are not limited to
the actual drifting (Gulliver does not float around on the ocean nearly as much
as you would think, given his bad luck); they are also used in the 'real'
sections in moments when Gulliver is set adrift in other ways. When he is
drugged and removed from his family, when he is abandoned among the insane, and
when he is addicted to opium, the music plays. There is a moment of fridge-horror
at the end of the film, where we are told that Gulliver is now safely back with
his family. Even as he says it, the drifting theme begins again ("ClosingTheme") and the camera zooms out to show the family as a single, fragile
speck in a vast, empty landscape.
It is a
fascinating way to close a story which, in one sense, has no narrative closure.
The individual's story closes, but the land - the sea - the society - the
satire - still remain. Each land has its own motif, which helps us to
understand the specific area that is being commented on. The Flight from Lilliput,
for example, is a military march played on bright band instruments, often
resorting to a minor key where (surely) a victorious brigade would prefer a
rousing major ("The Emperor's Palace" - 1.00 in). This echoes the
ongoing pointless war with the Bigenders - a conflict which is ultimately won,
costing millions of lives... which began because some men wished to break their
boiled eggs at the larger end. Brobdingnag has a more cultured tone, using harpsichord
music in a dainty French style to reflect the Versailles-esque fashions and
settings of its inhabitants ("The Doll's House"). The irony here is
that, when Gulliver claims they have no culture, we ourselves can see no
evidence of that. To our eyes, they appear quite sophisticated - and Gulliver's
subsequent Gunpowder demonstration makes him into a figure of fun for both us
and the citizens he frightens.
The
whimsical music supports this ("Gulliver's Big Bang"), allowing us to
use our own perception and recognise that Gulliver is not intended to be an omniscient
narrator. This becomes crucial later on, where we are forced to judge him for
ourselves as he is tried for insanity. Of course, this creates another way of
looking at the entire adaptation. Gulliver is constantly narrating these
stories - to his son, to the doctors at the asylum, and ultimately to a
judicial court. We hear his words, but there is no way of telling whose
'vision' of events we are being shown.
The
Lilliputians resemble Thom's toy soldiers and the Academy has the same
structure as the asylum. Further, the court treats all distant lands as exotic,
whether we refer to a voyage to the Struldbrugg's lands or to Australia.
Brobdingnag might as well be France, and so, using exclusively French styles in
its soundscape is apt. In a way, this makes some of the more cliché moments in
the soundtrack more forgiveable. However, it does also lead to some
uncomfortable moments. The quasi-Indian, almost childish music of Laputa is
presented as laughable and un-musical by the narrator, and is often overtaken
by Western instruments ("The Emperor Munodi"). The tribal drums of
the Yahoo ("The Yahoos") are even more unsettling in a film where messages are more concerned with social and moral structures, not racial
slander. Perhaps this is an issue with the text (written during a time of
slavery), but one feels that there may have been a better way to communicate
the message than to specifically associate the savagely inhuman Yahoo with
African music.
It should
be noted that, even though Gulliver's Travels is several hours long, the music
manages to stay fresh even over multiple viewings. The main theme is varied but
remains familiar enough for us to recognise its signals
(drifting/fictional/regional etc). Even the more dramatic moments (for example,
"Journey to Bedlam") retain this singular sense of purpose; the
pace of the main motif stays almost the same, while excitement is caused by the
doubling of the texture in the orchestra. And, a final nod to the splendid
performance of the orchestra, who infuse Jones' compositions with the life and
passion that make all his soundtracks a joy to listen to.
To listen to the whole soundtrack, click here
To listen to the whole soundtrack, click here
Review by Vivien Leanne Saunders
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