DARIO MARIANELLI | Beyond the Gates (Shooting Dogs)

MovieScore Media is a label that has ultimately fused their name with quality. Continuingly focusing on releasing original scores of high standards and further empowering their efforts to promote worthy work by relatively unknown composers, they have managed to assemble an impressive back-catalogue so far.

Prominently crowned by several noteworthy works, the last six months have seen the quality of their releases climatically increasing to high levels. Most notably, Jeff Grace and Anton Sanko’s dark beast of a score that is The Last Winter, Andrew Lockington’s ominous orchestral powerhouse of SkinWalkers, Jeff Toyne’s elegantly violin-led thriller score for Shadow in the trees and the melodically romantic The Rocket Post by Nigel Clarke & Michael Csányi-Wills, made up the most impressive period for the label so far, a fact that both empowers their image as a quality label even more but also charges them with additional high standards which they're expected to follow in the years to come.

Lately, MSM has been blessed with two releases by one of the most prominent and promisingly talented younger film composers working today, Dario Marianelli. Born in 1963 in Pisa, Italy, Dario is the composer of the Academy Award © nominated for Best Original Score Pride And Prejudice, a deeply classical-oriented and refined orchestral score blessed with lushly melodic soli that captured the interest of everyone to his – then – fresh name and work in the genre. The significantly darker orchestral works for The Brothers Grimm and V for Vendetta followed only to be briefly interrupted by a couple of careless and disappointing scores such as Goodbye Bafana and The Brave One.

Thankfully, his distinctly European-colored Atonement came this year to spark interest again and MSM further drew significant attention to his name by releasing the 2003 score for I Capture the Castle, a charming little orchestral score that – despite its lack of particular originality - made for a very pleasant listening experience overall whilst it also carried elements that were to be further developed and expanded later in the afore-mentioned Pride and Prejudice.

2005 British drama Beyond the Gates (also known outside the USA as Shooting Dogs) is veteran director Michael Caton - Jones’ strong film about the horrendous genocide in Rwanda in 1994, where 800,000 people were killed in 100 days. Starring John Hurt, Hugh Dancy and Dominique Horwitz, the film’s a very touching experience, one which Dario was called to provide original music for and also marked the 2^nd release for the composer via this label.

During his research Dario found out that at the time of the genocide a lot of Tutsis were listening to the songs of Cecile Kayirebwa, who had become the voice of their plight; a voice to which they really connected their sufferings. Dario features her captivatingly majestic voice once again in his original score for Beyond the Gates, ably setting a solemn atmosphere of devoutness through her amazingly deep and varicolored vocal timbre which is used as the primal ingredient throughout the whole score.

Marianelli built the rest of his score on small instrumental ensemble, chiefly led by string orchestra enriched by subtle and melancholic electronic veil, with various instrumental soli laying on top, notably the piano, the duduk (“Empty roads”), the harp (“Is God Here” in a solemnly ethereal piece with vocals and smooth strings) and electric cello on “How do you call this” and “Hell’s gate”. This very piece opened the score on album with a constantly repeated rhythmic piano motif which further made up the rhythmic structure of the whole score. Along with a suspended chord on the strings backed up by electronics, they altogether provided a pompous isocrates (a technique upon which Marianelli largely relies for this work) and also a slowly-building dramatic base for the majestic vocals to run upon. Additionally, this particular way of composition (chiefly the piano rhythmic motif) is strongly reminiscent of Alexandre Desplat’s writing, mainly as noted in his works for The Painted Veil and Syriana, the later being a score widely echoed in Marianelli’s Beyond the Gates as a whole.

The largest part of the score evidently consists of dramatically slow build-ups based on strings/atmospheric electronics and synths, all led by Cecile’s mystifying vocals and the afore-mentioned instrumental soli, with a couple of notably darker exceptions (“Last Offering” and “No Way out”). While there are no particularly memorable or distinct themes, the string section – which bears a significant melodramatic role through the whole work – often reappears through recognizable chord processions and comprises several singularly touching and beautiful pieces headed by the tenderly melancholic hymn of “Speechless”. This piece is later reprised by a full percussion set, strings, and subtle electronic female choir in a rhythmic and slightly more upbeat “We turned our backs”, perfectly hinting hope and fittingly sealing this beautiful album.

The single element that makes this score truly remarkable however, is “Remember Us”, a dramatically intense and breathtakingly fervid orchestral hymn led a heartbreaking melodic line on the strings that ultimately create impetuously powerful emotions which can't be easily described via plain words.

Beyond the Gates is a particularly heartfelt work that bears discreet elements from Alexandre Desplat, Hans Zimmer’s Tears of the Sun and the solemn moments (like “hunger”) from BlackHawk Down and The Thin Red Line, both intensely evoked in this Marianelli score and further enforced by the presence of the African singing of Cecile Kayirebwa and a number of African songs performed by the Chorale de Kigali with the Voices of Kicukiro in Rwanda, all firmly echoing the African chants from The Thin Red Line mentioned above. Marianelli filtered these through evident passion, imagination and soul - quality elements which ultimately elevated his score into one remarkable release and a singularly thoughtful, esoteric and intimate journey into the depths of musical beauty.

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