The NeverEnding Story

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Music reviews of The NeverEnding Story

Music Review: Giorgio Morodor and Klaus Doldinger  The Never Ending Story
Rating: 3 Stars

When I read the costumer reviews on this score, I noticed a large amount of heaven-high praise for the composition and its role in the film-music world. My reaction was first one of wonder and then disbelief. As a collector and lover of moviemusic, my main motivation for buying this CD was nostalgia. The little kid, staring at the television-screen at Christmas or Easter - eyes popping out with marvel and mouth open with ensorcelled fascination. That is the true appeal of this recording: the memory and the melancholy. Not any supremacy on account of the music itself. Being a fantasy and science fiction aficionado, I have re-viewed this film at a later age several times. Hearing the music that was accompanying the images, I regarded it as too "modern", too "eighties" - "electropop". Not actually befitting the imagery nor the subtext. My lasting opinion is that this film would have done better with a full-blooded orchestral score. In consequence, I have always preferred to spend my budget on other scores before buying this one.

That said: the music is not that bad at all, if one listens in the right manner. Like watching a horror-film from the fifties and ignoring the bogus effects. I am unaware of the story behind needing two composers for this project, but I cannot say it improved the whole. Giorgio Morodor signed up for tracks 1-5 (including the title-song by Limahl, who incarnates my point on electropop in filmmusic), Klaus Doldinger for the rest (tracks 6-15).
Morodor's music is dominated by ambient electric guitar and floating synths. "Swamps Of Sadness" is spacey, mysterious - but strangely never sad or swampy. Atreyu's horse Artax goes to death, perhaps the most powerful scene in the movie - but hearing this music I cannot imagine that moment. Disconnected from the film, it is not bad music, but should one perceive it as thus? "Ivory Tower" feels like a wordless eighties pop song. "Ruined Landscape" is the only Morodor track that sparks up my imagination, and although I hate the beat and electric guitar, I can actually imagine flying over a crumpled scenery on the back of a luckdragon. Morodor's last track is his best though: "Sleepy Dragon". It is all but similar to tracks 2 and 4, but in this case, it matches the title seamlessly. Do not presume too easily that this is a compliment.

Luckily, Doldinger picks up from there. You might know him for composing the music for that German sub movie "Das Boot", which was also a Wolfgang Petersen film.
"Bastian's Happy Flight" is my favourite track of the album. It exuberant and powerful, it is the sort of music a film like this deserves. Too bad, it is synthesiser based, but when this theme occurs you can forgive and forget. (To the person who reviewed and complained this theme occurs several times throughout the score: that is what main themes are for, silly.) When it reappears in "Atreyu's Quest", it is noble and grand (strangely reminding me of Howard Shore's "The Fellowship Of The Ring"). When "Atreyu Meets Falkor" we fly along, and it closes the album with a truly "Happy Flight". That makes four times, which is not often at all in my opinion.
"Fantasia" is only fifty-five seconds long, but it is my second favourite track, because it makes me feel like reading a book and seeing the world inside beyond and between the ink and paper. It has that... transporting quality. After hearing "Theme Of Sadness", we have almost forgotten who Giorgio Morodor was. Beautiful woodwind, gorgeous strings. "The Auryn" does its job perfectly well: it grants us the wish for more enchanting music, and it takes away a memory. The final recollection of Mister Morodor is swept from our minds.

I wish Doldinger had composed ALL the music on this album. More than that, I would have loved a composer who did not use synthesisers...but I am starting to whine. As said, I bought this record for the small kid in my memory, who loved the movie so much that he went to the library and picked up the book (small font, four-hundred pages!). The azure and red letters - the way every chapter started with the next letter of the alphabet - the wonderfully trouble-free illustrations - the hoping that you would end up in Fantastica like Bastian, simply by reading that book. "Die Unendliche Geschichte" by Michael Ende still counts as one of my best childhood experiences. Let us not spoil that feeling by whining about bigger budgets for moviescores and by nagging about bad sequels.

Hmmm, one can hope, of course, for a remake with all the virtues of modern-day movie making. CGI- Falkor, Ivory Tower, Morla the Aged One and all the other creatures. Evil Ygramul the Many can be inserted. The rock chewer would not ride a tricycle. Oh well, with Fantasy booming these days, I will not be surprised to find myself in a theatre looking at an I-MAX screen, flying over the grassy fields of Atreyu's home-world.
However, that would be an entirely other story, and would best be told another time.

This one gets three stars for the music and two for the memory - minus one for Giorgio Morodor, minus one for Limahl.

Bram Janssen, The Netherlands.

Description of The NeverEnding Story

Alternative Rock CDs

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