Search - James Newton Howard :: The Emperor's Club [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]

Hollywood has created a virtual minigenre by portraying ceaselessly dedicated, if sometimes flawed, teachers goading their troublesome young charges to greatness (see also Stand and Deliver, Mr. Holland's Opus, and Dead Poet's Society). But director Michael Hoffman's tale crucially turns when its prestigious prep school teacher (Kevin Kline) ensnares himself in a moral dilemma while stoking the virtual Ivy League assembly line he toils for. Thus James Newton Howard's score sparkles with the intelligence implied by its modern orchestral pastoralism, yet comes haunted with a bittersweet emotional undercurrent as well. It's the sort of deceptively breezy, yet fragile balance that Rachel Portman employed in The Cider House Rules and elsewhere to great effect, toughened up and distanced with a little of Horner's A Beautiful Mind minimalist bent; in Howard's capable hands, it's a successful and ever-compelling mix. --Jerry McCulley