Customer Reviews

Road Home: Original Motion Picture Score

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Upon leaving the theatre after seeing Zhang Yimou's The Road Home, I was left whistling the theme song as much as I could between tears and sighs. The next day, I made it a point to grab the soundtrack.

The soundtrack, much like the movie, is beautifully simple and interwoven perfectly into the scenes, so much so that the names of the tracks on the CD are the names of the scenes from which they are taken. This, however, is where the problems begin.

All of the pieces of the score have a basic melody to them, and are merely performed in different arrangments by different instruments during the course of the movie. For example, the track "First Appearance" is just that - the 20 seconds of background music played during the first arrival of the teacher. Unlike the soundtrack for a film such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon which has several distinct pieces with very different sounds and moods, the soundtrack for The Road Home could easily be only 15 minutes long, with various bits and pieces chopped up for different scenes, and, no track sounding significantly different from any other. Additionally, and curiously, included is the soundtrack for another one of Zhang Yimou's films, Not One Less.

With that in mind, however, there is no detracting from the quality of the music. San Bao's ability to translate the sentiment into music is uncanny, and there is no mistaking that the movie and soundtrack are pieces of the same puzzle. This is in stark contrast to soundtracks for films such as Bruckheimer/Simpson/Bay productions whose Hans Zimmer pieces could easily be lifted from any given film and recycled.

All in all, those who loved the movie will love the soundtrack, which will serve as a nice piece of background music in one's home, but its repetitiveness makes it difficult to enjoy as a standalone piece of music. I have thoroughly enjoyed listening to it on many occassions, but usually while multitasking. If you loved the movie as much as I did, the soundtrack will be a good "fix" to have until the DVD of the movie is released.

San Bao's beautiful and elegant soundtrack is the perfect accompaniment to Zhang Yimou's beautiful and elegant film, "The Road Home." Feauturing a lovely melody arranged in multiple forms, the soundtrack carries the haunting emotional force of the multiple love stories that comprise the film--love of husband, love of wife, love of child, love of parent, love of duty. Pure, it is thankfully free of the "wall of sound" approach that so many western soundtracks adopt, making the listening experience as ethereal as hearing gentle rain on a summer night.

I don't have the soundtrack...yet. But I'm so glad to have found it here. I was pleasantly surprised to see "Not One Less" listed on the soundtrack as well...Maybe I'll wake up from this dream.

I originally searched under "Bao Shi," because I thought this was the name that appeared on TRH's official Sony site. No luck...but somehow, I did something differently here and the soundtrack link appeared.

The soundtrack from "The Road Home," especially the last scenes, is incredibly haunting and powerful like the memories they were about, although they were 40 years old. Although we know Zhao Di is still alive and well, the scenes of her younger memories are like those of who she really is on the inside...but those of someone who existed in her past and of who she was then.

The soundtrack from "Not One Less," had such a victorious note to it...I saw this movie first and enjoyed that last scene...it tied it all together. When I saw it on a preview for another video I watched, it all came back. "Not One Less" is another powerful gem that I hope gets shown in classrooms around the world and especially here in the US. Little did I know that both movies had more in common than just their directors and the types of characters they were about.

Someone might say, "how can someone make such a deal about this?" Well...these are the kinds of details in a person life that make Zhang Yimou's or any director's work powerful.

It's the kind of stuff that would make him think of a bowl or hairclip as meaning the whole world to someone who would never register on the timeline, in a village far away in a place most people have probably never heard of.

The film music is very beautiful. The soundtrack is not available even in chinese-speaking countries like Hong Kong and China, where the film has been a success. It surprised me that I could purchase it from USA, after so many years' search.

I bought this CD in hopes that it would have some of the amazing vocals off one of the movie trailers. Alas it was not to be. The CD is ok, but nothing to write home about.

I'm trying not to use the word "shallow" (oops!) because it sounds so negative, but this disk lacks depth, which, I grudgingly suppose, makes it "shallow." But I use the word more clinically than critically. This disk incorporates expositions of a very charming theme, and anyone who has enjoyed this excellent film will be happy to indulge San Bao's soundtrack. Most of the tracks are variarions on a single theme, but what a theme it is! The inclusion of music from a wholely different film "Not one less" seems like an attempt to give musical depth to the offerings on the disk, however I'm happy to have the extra music to listen to, although it doesn't really flow with the original soundtrack.

But I'm done criticizing this excellent music that I've been listening to endlessly since I greedily pried it from its package; This is wonderful music even though it is limited in its thematic scope, and a genuinely wonderful listen. I have purchsed entire albums in order to listen to only ONE track, and this is not of that ilk. It will, however, leave you wishing for more. If you haven't seen the movie, you really should before you decide to buy the soundtrack.

I'm trying not to use the word "shallow" (oops!) because it sounds so negative, but this disk lacks depth, which, I grudgingly suppose, makes it "shallow." But I use the word more clinically than critically. This disk incorporates expositions of a very charming theme, and anyone who has enjoyed this excellent film will be happy to indulge San Bao's soundtrack. Most of the tracks are variarions on a single theme, but what a theme it is! The inclusion of music from a wholely different film "Not one less" seems like an attempt to give musical depth to the offerings on the disk, however I'm happy to have the extra music to listen to, although it doesn't really flow with the original soundtrack.

But I'm done criticizing this excellent music that I've been listening to endlessly since I greedily pried it from its package; This is wonderful music even though it is limited in its thematic scope, and a genuinely wonderful listen. I have purchsed entire albums in order to listen to only ONE track, and this is not of that ilk. It will, however, leave you wishing for more. If you haven't seen the movie, you really should before you decide to buy the soundtrack.

I'm trying not to use the word "shallow" (oops!) because it sounds so negative, but this disk lacks depth, which, I grudgingly suppose, makes it "shallow." But I use the word more clinically than critically. This disk incorporates expositions of a very charming theme, and anyone who has enjoyed this excellent film will be happy to indulge San Bao's soundtrack. Most of the tracks are variarions on a single theme, but what a theme it is! The inclusion of music from a wholely different film "Not one less" seems like an attempt to give musical depth to the offerings on the disk, however I'm happy to have the extra music to listen to, although it doesn't really flow with the original soundtrack.

But I'm done criticizing this excellent music that I've been listening to endlessly since I greedily pried it from its package; This is wonderful music even though it is limited in its thematic scope, and a genuinely wonderful listen. I have purchsed entire albums in order to listen to only ONE track, and this is not of that ilk. It will, however, leave you wishing for more. If you haven't seen the movie, you really should before you decide to buy the soundtrack.