O.S.T/The Pursuit of Happyness

●「全民情聖」票房巨星威爾史密斯、杰登史密斯父子首度攜手合作電影 ●「盧安達飯店」歐洲電影獎最佳電影音樂作曲家大獎得主安卓亞古耶拉操刀，呈現深具寫意色彩的都會生活情境樂音 　　「全民情聖」票房巨星威爾史密斯與兒子杰登史密斯首度在大銀幕上表露父子深情的電影【當幸福來敲門】是以真實故事為靈感所創作而成的片子，劇情描述注重家庭生活，但經濟上十分拮据的克里斯賈納，雖始終努力的維繫家庭，但是，他的老婆卻因為無法承受這個家庭在財務上的緊繃所造成的壓力而離家，克里斯得獨自扛起撫養兒子克里斯多佛的重擔，變成單親爸爸的克里斯努力的尋找各種工作機會，後來在一家知名的證?公司找到一個實習缺的工作，雖然，這份實習生的工作沒有薪水，但是他卻懷抱著自己在完成實習後可以獲得正式聘雇的希望之中，接下了工作，由於沒有收入，克里斯很快的就被房東驅逐，克里斯帶著兒子流落街頭過生活，盡管面臨生活上的許多困境，克里斯仍努力的當一個好爸爸，最終克里斯從兒子對他的愛與信任之中，找到了克服生活難關的動力。 　　威爾史密斯在【當幸福來敲門】中的演出同時為他獲得了2007年奧斯卡與金球獎最佳男主角的提名，影片於全美上映後，不但拿下首映週票房冠軍，還連續6週穩坐票房排行榜前5名，至今在全球的累積票房更是直逼2億美金。 　　擔任電影音樂譜寫與製作的是義大利電影/電視音樂作曲家安卓亞古耶拉(Andrea Guerra)，古耶拉在2005年以「盧安達飯店」一片的電影音樂創作獲得歐洲電影獎最佳電影音樂作曲家大獎，而他與嘻哈藝人Wyclef Jean為該片所創作的主題曲〈Million Voices〉則是獲得了金球獎與葛萊美獎最佳電影主題曲的雙料提名。古耶拉自1990年投入影音創作行列以來，陸續完成了40多張的原聲帶，歷年的作品總計為他贏得了15座的音樂獎，其中包括2003年為他奪得2座義大利音樂獎的電影「外慾」。而在【當幸福來敲門】中，古耶拉則以輕盈的琴音，悠揚的吹管樂，生意盎然的打擊樂聲，優雅的弦樂，以及生動的電子環境聲效為影片營造出一份深具寫意色彩的都會生活情境樂音。

Product Details
Audio CD (January 9, 2007)
Original Release Date: January 9, 2007
Number of Discs: 1
Format: Soundtrack
Label: Varese Sarabande
ASIN: B000LE1694
In-Print Editions: Audio CD


Track Listings
1. Opening
2. Being Stupid
3. Running
4. Trouble At Home
5. Rubiks Cube Taxi
6. Park Chase
7. Linda Leaves
8. Night At Police Station
9. Possibly
10. Where's My Shoe
11. To The Game / Touchdown
12. Locked Out
13. Dinosaurs
14. Homeless
15. Happyness
16. Welcome Chris

Review
by Michael McLennan
on April 20th, 2007 printable Printable Version

This album from Varese Sarabande contains the majority of Andrea Guerra's underscore for the Will Smith salesman-to-stockbroker film The Pursuit of Happyness (2006). The film is an adaptation of Chris Gardner's memoir of his hard times as a single parent and underpaid stockbroking intern. (The film makes the intern position altogether unpaid for a little extra emotional mileage.) The film is fairly well acted and executed, but the whole thing passes by a bit easily considering the potential for some serious social comment. Among the things that bother me: the script is a fairly formulaic study of a rise above circumstances, leaning heavily on action that can be more easily visualised (e.g. endless scenes of Will Smith chasing somebody through the streets, showing his genius by figuring out a Rubik's cube) over arguably more relevant events (e.g. we get so little a sense of why Gardner is chosen above the other interns in the end). As for the tough life of poverty, this film parades the best poverty movie money can buy, recreating the period in style, bathing Gardner and his son in soft afternoon light as they aspire to better things, smoothing over the rough edges of the locations. Nonetheless, despite being overproduced at the expense of the story, the film communicates powerfully to people: I've been chased out of many a house for suggesting that it's anything but the most moving story to come out of Hollywood in a while.

In the hands of the right writer and director team, this is a film that probably wouldn't have needed to lean much on music at all. But since the film is the sort that books an appearance on Oprah, there is plenty of music, very little of it saying anything deep about the film. Andrea Guerra's music for the most part participates in softening the edges of being down and out in early eighties San Francisco. There's a sense of childlike amazement and emotion to the whole score, which speaks to the aspirations of Will Smith's character - no stark musical rendering of poverty or pessimism here. I'm familiar with the composer only from his contributions to the Hotel Rwanda soundtrack, so I have little sense of his style as a film composer. The whole score is written in the warm acoustic textures familiar from the scores of Rachel Portman, Thomas Newman, and (especially) Rolfe Kent - gentle strings, guitar, xylophones, woodwind solos, keyboard and light percussion.

Guerra's main theme is light as a feather - an eight-note melody presented for piano over soft bouncy strings and woodwinds in "Opening". It's a simple attractive theme, if a little too close to Rolfe Kent's About Schmidt theme to feel original. The title theme is not repeated often, and not really developed when it is - the numerous variations in "Where's my shoe?" essentially consisting of shifting instrumentation around an unchanging melody. More extensively used is the childlike five-note xylophone motif between statements of the main theme in "Opening". It contributes strongly to the sense of optimism throughout the score, and Guerra uses the idea beautifully for the main character's fleeting moments of elation later in the score - "Possibly", "To the Game / Touchdown", "Happyness" and the finale "Welcome Chris". There's also a nice, subdued appearance of the idea in 'Locked Out'.

I alluded to the film's (unexpected) reliance on chase scenes before, and you can definitely detect their presence via the soundtrack, though the dashes of allegro writing pleasing add to the variety of the album. While no two of these tracks are identical, there are basically two patterns overall: "Being Stupid" is extremely reminiscent of Thomas Newman with its layered sound of xylophone, pizzicato and piano and percussion rhythms vaguely reminiscent of the pop of the period. The other type is typified by "Running", with more formal structure and nice shifts in orchestration over a skittish string rhythm. Careful placement of cadences and flourishes lends a playful dimension to these scenes of one man (literally) chasing his livelihood. Even if it is all a bit familiar, to Guerra's credit he mixes it all up and keeps it engaging - for example, the flutter-tongue trumpets in "Park Chase". And there are signs of a careful attempt to distinguish the dramatic urgency of the different scenarios on display in the film. Subtle dissonances creep into the playful popish style of "Rubik's Cube Taxi" to suggest that more is at stake in this cue for the Will Smith character compared to the jaunty allegros found elsewhere on the album.

The darkest the music gets is for scenes like "Trouble at Home", where synthesized textures create subtle dissonances with the troubled string melody. That solemn melody - similar to Rachel Portman's melodic style - returns for the moving one-take sequence where "Linda Leaves". (The tapping percussion over oboe and strings seems to characterise Linda's growing irritation at Chris's aspirations beyond his station.) Similar melodic despair characterises "Locked Out", which even briefly engages in a nice contrapuntal setting of the score's aspirational and despair themes.

The recording keeps a soft sound on the whole thing, and the Hollywood Studio Symphony's performance under Blake Neely's baton is typically strong. I can't really commend this as a film score - it works, but you have to go with the aesthetic choice to candy-coat harsh times for a mass audience to feel like paying for the experience. Even taken on its own terms, the music isn't terribly original, however fitting in context. Nonetheless, the album is sufficiently varied to communicate a pleasant and inspirational musical journey, it's all tonal, and avoids all but the barest of dissonance, making it a score I wouldn't hesitate to recommend as a gift to fans of the film and others in need of cheering up.
Other reviews by Michael McLennan