Mother and Child is an American drama film directed and written by Rodrigo García, and stars Naomi Watts, Annette Bening, Kerry Washington and Shareeka Epps. It premiered on September 14, 2009 at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival and at the Sundance Film Festival on January 23, 2010. Writer/director Rodrigo García (Nine Lives) teams with executive producer Alejandro González Iñárritu to craft this drama highlighting the powerful bond between a mother and her child.
Composer of K-PAX and REIGN OF FIRE, Edward Shearmur provides a tender, at times melancholic but overly beautiful small-scale score for the tender film.
Piano leads with a 3-note main theme, completed by cello, harp, woodwinds, acoustic guitar, clarinet; a rich canvas of instruments scarcely enters the score, always of course underlined by a discreet veil of string orchestra. “Elizabeth’s letter”, “Ray keeps the baby” are some of the highlight tracks and what’s interesting is how the composer mixes his usual style with some elements we haven’t used to hearing from him, like the minimalistic repetitions of the first half in the “The letter is found” piece.
The score also carries a subtle European air in it, particularly with the small but elegant waltzes like “A waltz for Karen” and in some other places where the score echoes some Zbigniew Preisner or even Desplat. Of course there’s pieces like the gem in the end of the album, “Karen’s letter” which for anyone familiar with the composer’s work, this is where he shines, setting his trademark. Piano leads on top of smooth synth pads, followed by a bold and uplifting passing of the 3-note main theme through piano, guitar, woodwinds and tender female vocals all in a highly enjoyable and sentimental piece.
Charming little score this one, check it out on iTunes, or amazon.com.
Although not as bad as the press made sound when it came out, still it’s true that the problem with such projects is usually concentrated on quality: if you’re young and up-coming in flashy Hollywood (and more dangerously: inexperienced) and you have your connections, you have great possibilities of being lucky enough as to come up with the money needed to book actors like AL PACINO and ROBERT DeNIRO (!) – not that they actually are expensive to book these days either. Then you’re easily carried away into the usual trap, i.e. missing much more important virtues than what money can buy or what such a stellar cast can offer to you. So, despite the fact that such a cast would make international big news 20 years ago, nowadays we are sadly coming along what most modern flicks suffer from: quick, fast-food, one and a half hour entertainment for big fat couches and cozy nights. ‘Cause there’s nothing to take with you once the “stop” button your dvd / blu-ray player is pressed, unless you were unlucky enough to have visited the cinema for this, probably ending up with an empty mini pop-corn cup in this latter case. Other than the extra calories, you’ll find nothing there to collect; DeNiro and Pacino merely deliver cold and passion-less auto-pilot performances, but truth to be told, there’s not that much they can do with the careless directing and the overly familiar “good cop – bad cop” cliché.