Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Richard Thompson: Grizzly Man Soundtrack


This is the soundtrack from one of the best films I have seen recently, and no matter it is a documentary, by legendary german director Werner Herzog. You probably already know the story: Tim Treadwell, a weird kind of eco-warrior (as he did like to call himself) lived 13 consecutive summers in an alaskian region in the wild with grizzly bears, and finally got eaten by one of them. But don't get frightened by this: Herzog's film is in no way supposed to harm you or move you with false sentimantalisms, no way; in fact what it does is show some beautiful footage filmed by Treadwell himself (see below the youtube video, where you don't see Treadwell with his loved bears, but with some foxes: I chose this bit simply because of the beauty of the images and because of Herzog's words) and some commentaries made by friends of Treadwell's, people who knew or had heard of him, and by Herzog too (and this is where lies the real importance, to me, of the whole movie, i.e. where it is possible to understand Herzog's weltanschauung and the relation betweeen this film and the rest of his works).
And the soundtrack? Well, the soundtrack is some kind of miracle: composed and played by Richard Thompson along with some fabulous musicians (betweens these there is also Jim O'Rourke, the former Gastr Del Sol member, and great producer -he produced, for instance, Wilco's masterpieces Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A ghost is born). The music in here is maybe some of the best stuff for guitar I have heard: Thompson is playing at his best (which is definetly a lot). It is very hard to describe this music because there is so much in it: Jim O'Rourke's drones, some XX century classical music-influenced parts for cello, but mostly it is Richard Thompson playing brightly sounding guitar licks that can be considered country or british folk music (see the "Foxes" bit) or plain folk. The only non-original track by the way is the last:"Coyotes" performed by Don Edward.




More Info:
Richard Thompson's site
Grizzly Man search @ Youtube
Grzzly Man @ Metacritic

Grizzly Man Soundtrack

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank You Very Much

Anonymous said...

Curious to hear this. Thanks!

Anonymous said...

Seems to be nice but the link is dead!

Anonymous said...

Any way to have this re-posted? Tx.

Anonymous said...

link is working again...most excellent...thnks