Lolita: Original Soundtrack
Director Adrian Lyne's controversial update of novelist Vladimir Nabokov's classic meditation on morality and modern culture (which struggled to find a distributor because of its forbidden theme--a man's erotic obsession with a 12-year-old girl) found itself overshadowed in 1998 by a Washington morality play whose own human subtleties were relegated to the margins by politics. What shouldn't be overlooked is Ennio Morricone's masterful score. Many of the composer's familiar devices are present--stately melodies carried by elegantly mournful strings, subtle electronic colorations, chromatically adventuresome choral writing--but presented with such musical shading and emotional delicacy as to sound completely original. The main theme, set against subtly shifting piano arpeggios and gently welling strings, is generated by ethereal, nearly intangible electronic sources--another haunting masterpiece by a composer from whom we've come to expect nothing less. "Requiescant," another standout cue, revisits Morricone's penchant for choral writing, in this case a boy's choir set amid a sometimes atonal and overwhelming wash of strings and electronics--another composer might be as daring, but none would matchil Maestro's gripping emotional efficacy. To underscore the story's late-'40s period and themes, several well-chosen pop tracks have been woven into Morricone's score (including Vera Lynn's "I'm in the Mood for Love," "Tain't What You Do" by Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Prima's loopy "Civilization [Bongo, Bongo, Bongo]") and offer an unexpected--and amusing--contrast to the composer's own marvelous efforts. A must for Morricone lovers.--Jerry McCulley