AMG Review of Philip on Film: Filmworks by Philip Glass

Richard S. Ginell
All Music Guide

In conjunction with a fall 2001 touring film festival, in which the Philip Glass Ensemble played the composer's scores live in sync with the films, Nonesuch released this handy, compact five-disc retrospective of Glass' prolific output for the cinema. Perhaps subliminally aware that Glass' large film catalog is wildly uneven in quality, producers and longtime associates Kurt Munkacsi and Michael Riesman have chosen wisely and well, generally giving the best scores complete or nearly complete attention on the first four discs and saving the fifth disc for excerpts from others, as well as a few unreleased new works for the faithful. Of all of Glass' cinematic collaborators, director Godfrey Reggio seems to have brought out the best in this composer. "Koyaanisqatsi" (disc one) -- Reggio's cry of protest against the out-of-control pace of so-called civilization -- inspired Glass' most memorable film score, where his trademark arpeggios are put to furious use. The performance heard here is the uncut 1998 remake, which traces the shape of the score far more effectively than the original soundtrack on Antilles. The sequel, "Powaqqatsi" (disc two), is another worthy Glass score, reaching its peak when the music receives jolts of exhilaration from various Third World influences. "Dracula" (disc three), as played by the Kronos String Quartet, comes off a lot better here than as part of the film, where its serious, brooding aspects work against the campy images of Bela Lugosi and company on the screen. Almost all of "La Belle et la Bete" -- 71 of its 89 minutes -- is condensed onto one CD (disc four), providing a pretty good summary of Glass' outlandish yet successful attempt to superimpose a newly composed, Gallic-flavored opera upon the Jean Cocteau film. Besides reducing the Far East-spiked scores from "Anima Mundi" and "Kundun," the diverse mishmash of "Mishima," and the fairly uninteresting "The Secret Agent" and "The Thin Blue Line" into handfuls of easily assimilated cues, disc five plunges forward with a pair of 2001 Glass scores for film shorts by Peter Greenaway ("The Man in the Bath") and Atom Egoyan ("Diaspora"), plus an unreleased 1984 take of "Facades" used in Reggio's "Evidence." The meager crop of extras will, of course, drive Glass completists who have the rest of this stuff batty -- and frankly, the scores for the shorts are little more than summaries of Glass' usual mannerisms. But those who are new to Glass' film music need go no further than this collection for enlightenment.