Enigma
Label: Decca
Catalogue No: 289 467 864-2
Release Date: 16-Apr-2002
Total Duration: 55:47
UPN: 028946786420
John Barry’s score for the anticipated world war two thriller is far more appreciable than the ill-received MERCURY RISING. But then this film is a quality British drama, not a Bruce Willis lowbrower. Noticed and praised in many of the film’s domestic reviews, the score essentially has three elements: a triad of warm, simple themes for piano and strings; a small array of chase themes; and a substantial amount of music for suspense.
The first two elements have earned the score a warm reception. Both have an old-fashioned sense of the 1940s. The two love themes (one for Tom Jericho’s mysterious lost love Claire and one for his new love with Hester) glow warmly in the film and make a memorable end title. Indeed, at the film’s premiere, the audience raised their applause when Barry’s title card appeared at the end of the film. Barry also introduces a piano-led motif for the Enigma itself that functions in the same way that the Sicilian Defence motif worked in RAISE THE TITANIC, or the jewels motif of DEADFALL. It has much promise on album, but the film fails to make the Enigma so mysterious and therefore, sadly, the cue never really flourishes on screen.
By contrast the chase themes, of which there are really only two (‘Police Chase’ and ‘The Train’), function well in the picture and add a brisk stir to the score. It is the third element that, if any, will disappoint – the suspense cues. Those who remember the defection scenes of THE TAMARIND SEED, the climax of MONTE WALSH, or even the race against time at the end of MASQUERADE, will recall Barry’s brilliantly constructed crescendos, Here, the suspense cues billow and swirl but don’t really go anywhere. The highlights of the album are ‘Is That What Happened’ in which the love themes really take off, and ‘The Convoy’, the one outstanding suspense cue which adds great drama to the scenes in which the Bletchley codebreakers race against time to save a North Atlantic convoy from a U-boat ambush. The cues ‘London 1946’ and the end credits, in which the love themes and the Enigma motif enjoy a kind of ‘looking back’ swell, also enthrall.
Stephen Woolston – Originally published in Soundtrack Magazine Vol.11 / No.43 / 1992
