On Tuesday night some of my friends and I gathered to watch Cutthroat Island, a 1995 pirate film that won a place in the Guiness Book of World Records*
My friend recommended it because it has one of the most highly-acclaimed soundtrack scores in film history.
Watching the film itself was an experience like none other. I would love to meet the writers and ask them a few questions about how they came up with the plot and characters. I’m sure it would be a very enlightening conversation.
For those of you who haven’t seen this film, the plot has a major twist (just one): The main pirate is a woman.
Isn’t that clever?
Now, don’t worry, the filmmakers don’t actually explore too many angles for this situation. They know better than to bog down a straightforward plot by making the main character have to use feminine wit or a brains-over-brawn approach for the rest of the characters, who are all male.
Nope, the filmmakers respected their agenda too much to do anything like that. So besides the times where Morgan uses her femininity for, um, provocative purposes, she acts just like a man. She thinks like a man, drinks like a man, punches pirates in the face like a man, etc. Now that’s attractive!
Some people might find it hard to find anything likeable about Lady Pirate Morgan. I’m not sure why. She has a clear and simple goal (get this—she wants to find treasure) and doesn’t let other aspirations or motivations mix in with that. She has a way of using people to get what she wants, which I find kind of endearing. I think the most compelling reason to root for her, though, is because when she is finding treasure or fighting battles or whatever, she has really nice hair.
She’s also indestructible. She survives falling out of a crow’s nest and still wins the duel. She falls a hundred feet onto a rocky shore and sustains only an injury to her eyebrow. As the ever-eloquent Matthew Modine character observes, “You are much more active than other women I’ve met!” (Don’t worry, that line made just about as much sense in context.)
Oh, there is so much to learn from this film. You learn about good military tactics. For example, if you are on a ship in port and you see a pirate fleeing along the dock, it’s good practice to fire all of your canons toward her, right at the city. The civilians can just get out of the way.
We also learn that when solid cannonballs hit stone buildings, they cause great fiery explosions.
And even though an explosion blows a ship to smithereens, treasure boxes will remain intact as they sink to the bottom of the sea. Two pirates, one of whom has just fallen from a crow’s nest, can easily swim to the bottom of the ocean and pull all the treasure back up.
Easy to see why this movie won an award, huh? I admit I may have missed some finer points of the plot with all of the derisive laughter and snide remarks that were for some reason were going on all around the room. Some of the less appreciative among us were hoping that one of the impossible falls would actually kill the main characters so that the producers would be forced to end the movie early.
Not sure why. After all, Cutthroat Island features such a strong, sympathetic and just plain likeable character, with great acting skills. Of course I am referring to my favorite character of the film—King Charles the monkey.
* from the Wikipedia article: “The movie is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the biggest box office flop of all time.”
But the soundtrack is still good.
July 30th, 2009 - 9:21 am
This movie was without a doubt the worst made I have ever seen.
I think what a bothered me the most was the male lead had nothing useful to say. Captain Shiny Teeth, as we called him, just made bad puns and quips while Lady He-Woman punted peoples heads and destroyed everthing. All the dialog in the movie was rather poor actually. I think their main focus in making it was how to have every scene have an explosion in it in hopes it would save the movie from utter failure. Which didn’t work by the way.
July 30th, 2009 - 10:19 am
hmm, I’m not seeing it in AFI’s (American Film Institute) list of the top ten (as of 2005)–their top 25 list isn’t available to download anymore. Who wrote the soundtrack? Not that I’m clamoring to watch the movie or anything.
AFI was the organization that declared Star Wars Episode IV has the greatest film score of American film history, at least until 2005; and after my term paper, I’m inclined to think the verdict stands.
July 30th, 2009 - 10:24 am
Check out the info from that source of all knowledge, Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutthroat_Island_(soundtrack)). Buda would be able to tell you more
July 30th, 2009 - 11:51 am
Have you ever eaten too many pieces of candy you didn’t like in the first place? For me it would be, say, black licorice sticks. One stick one right after the other, never any pleasure, but feeling sicker and pukier with each swallow. That is how the minutes ticked by as I watched this film. I would like the entire experience, along with the bad aftertaste, stricken from my memory.
July 30th, 2009 - 11:59 am
John Debney wrote the score. The score is hailed among the best of pirate film scores (they are quite numerous actually) The music pays tribute to the original Korngold (Earryl Flynn) pirate films and gives new meaning to the term swashbuckling, a term which is reserved for this sub-genre in film music. Recent pirate films incidentally, are accurately NOT graced with this term. Cutthroat Island is, as of yet, the crowning achievement of the composer and is hailed among the best of film scores as a whole.
I wouldn’t say that there is one better OST that is better than another. My opinion changes every once in a while. Think of a 5 star rating system. There are 5 star OST’s and 1 star ones. Others still deserve the rating deemed “frisbee” (no rating). Cutthroat Island is considered to be a 5-star masterpiece, and that is what gives it the critical acclaim it deserves.
BTW, Star Wars V is probably the best of the Star Wars scores as good as IV is, V was better. (think Imperial March)
July 30th, 2009 - 12:50 pm
The imperial march was just genius. It actually is probably the single best piece in the entire saga. They actually considered dubbing it in Episode IV when they went back and digitalized the original trilogy. The reason they didn’t is because it would have damaged the cohesiveness and inevitability of the Episode IV score. I’d be glad to show you my paper on it.
Be forewarned, though–while the research and analysis had been going on all semester, I didn’t actually finish the paper itself till 4am the day it was due. So a few sentences don’t really make sense…
July 30th, 2009 - 12:54 pm
Okay, so the paper isn’t nearly as bad as my last comment makes it sound.
There is one sentence that I should have broken into two. The 50’s and Glass don’t belong in the same sentence, but I didn’t think of that at 4am.