With his soaring romantic score for
Neil Jordan
's 1999 film adaptation of
Graham Greene
's novel
The End of the Affair
,
Michael Nyman
retained his place, already firmly established by his work on movies like
The Piano
Gattacca
, and
Carrington
, as one of the most sure-handed film composers of the '90s. His music for
beautifully reflects the full emotional range of
Jordan
's film, underlining with equal dexterity the passionate attraction between
Greene
's star-crossed lovers (exquisitely played by
Ralph Fiennes
and
Julianne Moore
), the pain of their inevitable separation, and the lurking menace of
Fiennes
' hateful jealousy. In one scene, the
character, a novelist, suggests that happiness is harder to write than unhappiness. But
Nyman
seems perfectly comfortable with both, contrasting the gentle piano melody of
"Love Doesn't End"
with the elegiac strings of
"Sarah Dies."
As you might expect from a period romantic drama, the score is dominated by violin -- there are an eyebrow-raising 24 violinists in the composer's
Michael Nyman Orchestra
-- but the music, like the film, nonetheless manages to avoid almost any lapses into melodrama. The soundtrack's producer,
Cameron Allen
, wisely decided against including any of the 1940s pop songs used in the film (
Jo Stafford
's
"Haunted Heart"
played a particularly significant role). This is not
's best score, but it deserves the chance
Allen
gives it to stand on its own without superfluous supplementation. ~ Evan Cater