The Legend of Bagger Vance: Music from the Motion Picture (2000 Film)

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Robert Redford’s fable of a cynical, young, white war veteran (Matt Damon) learning the perfect golf swing–and the meanings of life–from a mysterious black caddy (Will Smith) is typically rich in subtexts, from racial discrimination to armchair existential philosophy. As she did for the period dramaThe Cider House Rules, English composer Rachel Portman imbues Vance with an American sense of time and place. Bookended by the bluesy jazz of Fats Waller, Mugsy Spanier, and Duke Ellington, Portman’s elegant orchestral score is rich in powerful brass and string-driven melody and emotional nuances. Portman once again displays a strong affinity for the plaintive resolve and emotionally longing colors of Aaron Copland’s most familiar works, and there are moments here that subtly evoke passages of that composer’s Lincoln Portrait. It’s a fine irony of modern film that one of Copland’s spiritual heirs and most effective practitioners of his essentially male American musical ethos is a soft-spoken Englishwoman. –Jerry McCulley