Lauded composer Elliot Goldenthal doesn’t deign to work all that much in film these days — the lure of stage and opera work is great, particularly when he gets Pulitzer recognition for it — and when he does, it’s not always in projects worthy of his gifts. (Anyone want to hazard a guess why he scored “S.W.A.T.” in 2003?)
But this year finds him thoroughly immersed in the big screen again, renewing two partnerships that have proved productive in the past. We’ve already heard his work on “Public Enemies” — his first pairing with Michael Mann since “Heat” in 1995 — which was largely muted and effective, with a contemporary acoustic edge that landed on the right side of anachronistic. (I maintain, however, that the use of Diana Krall was a miscalculation.)
But more eyes (or ears, rather) might be on his next collaboration with personal and professional partner Julie Taymor, whose screen interpretation of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” is wavering between a 2009 or 2010 release. Anne Thompson profiles the composer and drops some intriguing hints about the latter project:
Goldenthal’s now finalizing the score for Taymor’s demi-musical “The Tempest,” starring Helen Mirren as Prospera and Ben Whishaw as a singing Ariel. The movie uses Shakespeare’s own songs. “It’s a challenge to find something mysterious and not arcane, and not Elizabethan sounding,” he says. “It has to sound like something you’ve never heard or can categorize. I have to compose around the Shakespeare meter.”