As I note in my review of Rachel Portman's simultaneously released anthology
Soundtracks, Portman has a very distinctive style, doing what she
does from film to film with really very little variation in approach. Here
she is doing it again, wonderfully. Charming as the recent
Chocolat
was, The Legend of Bagger Vance is simply delightful. There
is considerable continuity in that again the music is orchestrated by the
composer with Jeff Atmajian and conducted by David Snell. It is a formula
which works, so there seems to be no need to fix it.
The film is one of Robert Redford's Americana fables, which just as Kevin
Costner's Field of Dreams used baseball, adopts golf as a metaphor
for the deeper things in life. The film is set in The South in the 1920's,
but while three period songs help set the scene Redford sensibly keeps well
away from the ragtime which defined The Sting, (1973) his most successful
venture into this period. The songs are fine for what they are, with Ellington's
'Mood Indigo' being by far the best of the trio. But it is the score we are
here for.
Portman offers perhaps her richest and most infectiously memorable score
to date. Certainly it is the equal of her wonderful work on Emma (1996).
There is, as really is to be expected from Portman, a wistful piano theme
full of folk colours and shadings. There are variations on this throughout
the score, and absolutely gorgeous as it is, developing into a theme of heartfelt
nobility, this melody really plays second place in the memorability stakes
to a more upbeat tune which appears less often, but as both as a jaunty march
and a jazz inflected dance. It is really guaranteed to put a smile on most
any face. Elsewhere there is some of the most hauntingly delicate music you
are ever likely to hear in a score for a modern American film. Track four,
'Bagger Offers to Caddy for Junuh' and the following 'Bagger and Hardy Measure
the Course at Night' are perfect examples of lyrically spellbinding cues
where time seems to stop, held in abeyance by sheer beauty.
Alongside Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Stephen Warbeck, also released
this month, here we have proof that charm, subtly, taste and an exquisite
sense of melody are live and well in the hands of British composers working
if not on blockbusters, then on intelligent mid-budget features. As long
as work of this quality finds its way into the multiplex we can be assured
that cinema hasn't entirely given itself over to the mindlessness of the
lowest common-denominator. Fans of the composer should snap this gem up
immediately. Those who don't know Rachel Portman's work could find no better
time than to start exploring, with both this and Soundtracks currently on
the shelves. Each is gorgeous in its own right, but perhaps oddly, I would
recommend this over the compilation, as it really is breathtakingly beautiful
and intoxicatingly magical throughout. What else to start than with the best?
Gary S. Dalkin
orchestrated by the composer
and Jeff Atmajian; conducted by David Snell 
