Today marks the release of Southpaw, a film starring Jake Gyllenhaal as a boxer trying to get his life back on track. The movie's music is the last work of composer James Horner, who recently died in a plane crash; it's one of his best works among 100-plus film scores. Though very much a classical composer at his core, Horner found himself highly attuned to writing for film and driven by a deep respect for filmmaking.
To summarize Horner's career is difficult. Easily shifting across genres and compositional stylings, he became one of the most recognized composers by carefully tailoring each score to meet that particular film's needs. Best known as the composer for Titanic and other Oscar-bait epics such as Braveheart and Apollo 13, many kids came to Horner's work with films like An American Tail, The Land Before Time, and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids: positive children's fare emboldened by rich orchestrations and cue-driven compositional decisions that speak to the stories. They have stood the test of time—even something cheesy like Honey, I Shrunk the Kids—in part because the scores were respected the material and its audience.
Horner was not a temp score composer. He had a deep respect for the compositional process and believed that a film's score should not be rushed or disorganized. This led to outspoken dissatisfaction at times. One example was famously highlighted in interviews about Aliens: Horner addressed being forced to work very quickly due to Cameron's shooting and editorial process, essentially writing the majority of cues overnight because the cuts were never finished in time.
Despite this limitation, he produced one of his most iconic scores, earning an Academy Award nomination in the process—unheard of for an action film. The main cue for the final action scene proved to be so dynamic that it has since been used endlessly in film trailers and action sequences, becoming the precursor to Hans Zimmer's BRAAAM from Inception.
It's something out of time that has lost none of its edge 30 years later. Atmospheric textures accomplished often by strings and choir, the mixes are relatively sparse by today's standards, emboldened by the military march drum roll. It's an expansive action set piece that allows for richly developed characters and a very thoughtful narrative.
In more dramatic fare like Field of Dreams and The New World, Horner's signature piano arrangements take center stage with ambient texture as foundation. As his piano work came to define Horner's sound, he began to experiment with synthesized dynamics, incorporating organic material like bells and the human voice. Managing to easily transition from music that pulls you along and music that is barely there, Horner composed to collaborate with the story rather than garnish grandstanding sensibilities we see often in modern cinema. It was not enough to just do what he knew how to do. He tested what he knew and what audiences expected from him.
Though this work is rarely cited, Horner connected heavily with jazz, which filtered into scores like The Life Before Her Eyes and All the King's Men: scores that for all intents and purposes shouldn't work, but do. Making sense of counter rhythms and more free experimental approaches with bass and brass, these scores allowed Horner to break assumptions and defy assumptions about the limits of his musical vocabulary.
With Southpaw we hear this same spirit. His atmospherics and piano arrangements are here, but there's also a new electronic vibe that sets this work apart. Built on his 30+ year foundation, it's also very new for his approach and speaks to a creativity that was cut short too soon. It doesn't sound like a boxing film. Its arrangements feel personal and driven by narrative relationships, taking listeners back to the same sensibilities heard in Aliens.
There's an acute sadness in this score—knowing that it's the last we can expect. For someone around so long we grow to expect complacency. Horner was searching for new territories. Just imagine what he could have done with the right material and a little more time.
Garrett Tiedemann is a writer, filmmaker and composer who owns the multimedia lab CyNar Pictures and its record label American Residue Records.
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