Titanic Soundtrack Review
by Joe Tracy, Publisher of Hollywood Lot Magazine

Soundtrack by: James Horner

Tracks:
01 - Never an Absolution
02 - Distant Memories
03 - Southampton
04 - Rose
05 - Leaving Port
06 - "Take Her To Sea, Mr. Murdoch"
07 - "Hard To Starboard"
08 - Unable To Stay, Unwilling To Leave
09 - The Sinking
10 - Death of Titanic
11 - A Promise Kept
12 - A Life So Changed
13 - An Ocean Of Memories
14 - My Heart Will Go On (Love Theme from 'Titanic')
15 - Hymn To The Sea

Music is vital to drawing an audience into a story as it creates ambience that helps enhance an emotional response the director is trying to achieve on screen. With that in mind, James Horner couldn’t have picked a better time to produce his best score ever. Horner’s ability to capture the time period and emotion from Titanic helped give the movie and additional edge that made it the highest grossing movie of all time.

Music can literally make or destroy a scene and every piece of music composed and conducted by James Horner sets the stage for ultimate success. His music is moving, easy to get lost in, and powerful, when needed.

Titanic director James Cameron was so impressed with the score that he paid homage to it in the CD booklet, where he comments:

“James Horner’s score for Titanic is all I had hoped and prayed it would be and much more. It deftly leaps from intimacy to grandeur, from joy to heart-wrenching sadness and across the full emotional spectrum of the film while maintaining a stylistic and thematic unity. The music spans time, making immediate the actions and feelings of people 85 years ago with full emotional resonance without falling into either of the two dreaded traps: the sweeping conventional period picture score, or the inappropriately modern and anachronistic ‘counter program’ score.”

Horner’s score does have a “synthesizer” sound, which Cameron insisted on, and while it works great in the movie, a few people may be disappointed who are used to hearing fully orchestrated pieces without thinking of a synthesizer. But the slightly synthesized sound is essential to the way Horner tells the story, a story which is sometimes more believable through the music than through the screen. Case and point, the love scores in the soundtrack are brilliant, but, for me, the love scenes between Jack and Rose are extremely weak (see my review for why). Horner’s musical masterpieces lend first aid to the attempted love story that Cameron tries to tell in Titanic. Because the music is so good, the ambient undertone creates a stronger believability and emotional connection between the viewer and the on screen couple.

To see what an amazing difference music makes to a movie, simply sit down and watch the movie Tomb Raider. The music in Tomb Raider is so disjointed that instead of creating an emotional moving experience on screen, it draws attention to itself, thus pulling the viewer out of the mindset of the story. The music in Tomb Raider makes the movie appear dull, lifeless, and disjointed. Yet in Titanic, the undertones of the music and ability to carry the theme elegantly through several emotions, without drawing attention to itself, was essential in creating a masterful experience on screen. It’s no wonder that James Horner’s music won Oscars for “Best Score” and “Best Song” at the 1998 Academy Awards.

The addition of the song My Heart Will Go On to the movie Titanic propelled vocalist Celine Dion’s career to new heights. Despite what people think of the contrived love story, the Academy Award winning song perfectly takes the love theme and adds a voice to it that completes the Journey of James Cameron’s blockbuster.

Cameron was a bit intense when it came to hearing the score for the first time. He tells it best in the following excerpt from a public letter he wrote about the music:

“Early in '97, as filming ended, James invited me to his studio where he played some initial sketches and melodies on the piano. I will never forget the moment before James began to play... sitting there hoping and praying the themes would be good. And realizing minutes later that the themes were far beyond good. They were everything I had dreamed, perfectly capturing the aching, bittersweet heart of the film.”

And obviously fans thought so too as the soundtrack broke sales records around the world and My Heart Will Go On shot to the top of the charts where it would remain “King of the World” for a record period of time.

Horner’s Titanic score is an essential addition to one’s soundtrack collection. As the best selling soundtrack of all time, it is hopefully already in your home.