Search - Gabriel Yared :: Sylvia [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]

Informed by a challenging performance by Gwyneth Paltrow in the title role, director Christine Jeffs biopic chronicles the relationship between English poet Ted Hughes and the brilliant, if doomed writer Sylvia Plath, author of the seminal The Bell Jar. Veteran composer Gabriel Yared excels at detailing the often difficult interior lives of the film's characters with music that can be as subtle and warm as it is bittersweet, often using spare piano and string arrangements to evoke Plath's delicate state of mind and the emotional turmoil that follows in its wake. There are moments of romantic brightness early on, but Yared's score seems to follow the arc of Plath's own emotional and mental travails, seasoned with gently discordant piano notes and haunting string passages that increasingly hint at Plath's fascination with death and the ultimate tragedy it foreshadowed. James Horner covered similar thematic territory in his score to A Beautiful Mind, but Yared's music here often seems warmer, more human-scaled -- and ultimately more tragically compelling. --Jerry McCulley