True romance pervades Willard Carroll’s Playing By Heart, this new movie dwelling on the relationships of Sean Connery, Gena Rowlands, Madeleine Stowe and Anthony Edwards, all revolving like mirrorball facets. Barry has long been loath to choose anything approaching an action movie to score, apparently reacting badly against his own Bond legacy. Here, he strives towards the furthest possible point, making moist eyes glisten through a diaphanous gauze, but also risking the occasional dreary moment. Barry has picked a clutch of Chet Baker numbers as his inspirational core, calling on rising soloist Chris Botti to elaborate on the jazzman’s frozen trumpet curlicues, framing a small combo with the lush swell of over 60 string players.
After being submerged in these love juices, it comes as something of a shock to hear the re-recorded Zulu, now fractionally expanded from its original 20-minute duration. In the movie, silence was utilized at length, heightening the music’s impact once it arrived. Silva Screen released the original mono version just over a decade ago, and now this incarnation is presented in Dolby Surround. Its nine sections hurry through an exhausting variety of moods, percussive and angular, harsh horns tearing through sweeping string layers, extremely aggressive in places. With its two-disc capacity, the set also has time to present a capsule Barry history, newly interpreted, and sometimes edited down into capsule form. The Cotton Club’s muted-trombone growls lead into the genteel harpsichord preening of Love Among the Ruins. Midnight Cowboy’s ‘Florida Fantasy’ is two minutes of flatulent saxophone lunacy, while My Sister’s Keeper features a fractured harmonica solo that’s surely indebted to Ennio Morricone. Once more, Barry shows a tendency towards reliance on the impressionist string gesture, often at his more interesting when working on ‘mere’ action movies that he’s rationalized into some other ‘higher-thinking’ genre.Martin Longley