UNBREAKABLE on CD

By: Randall Larson
Date: Saturday, May 26, 2001

James Newton Howard's second collaboration with M. Night Shyamalan arrived on the CD racks the day before the movie's November 22nd opening. UNBREAKABLE (Hollywood Records HR-62290-2) is a much more understated and introspective score than THE SIXTH SENSE, which is saying a lot since that haunting score had plenty of introspective understatement embodied within its mysterious strains. But UNBREAKABLE is a thoroughly quiet, brooding work, comprised primarily of harmonic tonalities and ambient chords. The score is mainly constructed of tonal filaments. As if suggestive of the antithesis of the thematic concept embodied by the film's title, James Newton Howard has crafted a very fragile, delicate work, of soft piano fingering over whispers of violins. Occasionally a quiet percussive rhythm lends a sense of movement and direction, but primarily the music is a still life, reflective and thoughtful. The main thematic element, a languid, four-note descending melody repeated in rhythmic patterns, recurs throughout most of the cues in one shape or another, as a percussion and violin riff in the opening scene ('Visions'), as shadows of tonality in broodingly suspenseful cues like 'Reflection of Elijah,' and as a full worked out, vibrant melody in 'End Title.'