Search - Howard Shore :: The Yards (2000 Film)

As he directed his brooding urban crime drama "The Yards," director James Gray claims he inspired the mood of his cast and crew with a steady musical diet of Puccini, Holst, and Ravel. Such efforts are not unusual in filmmaking; Stanley Kubrick and Sergio Leone used similar gambits to great effect. But a director's use of music for inspiration on the set can present a film's ultimate scorer with some challenging preconceptions. Fortunately, Gray hired veteran Howard Shore, the longtime David Cronenberg collaborator, whose own tastes run to the same early-20th-century composers that Gray had selected. The results are immediate, with the Holstian "Blackout" segueing quickly into the mournful, melodic trumpet lines of "Queensborough Hall"--and a distinctly Italian operatic air. Indeed, Shore masterfully blends those impressionistic flourishes and spare melodies into his own trademark minimalist orchestral sensibility. The result is atmospherically dark and dramatically sullen, a wholly effective modernist's update of Nino Rota's Godfather sensibilities and yet another tribute to Shore's mastery of mood over melody. --Jerry McCulley