A dog’s way home

Someday, if I ever get the chance, I would like to ask the acclaimed film director Ang Lee, why the also acclaimed Canadian film composer Mychael Danna did not get the chance to score the award-winning Brokeback Mountain.  Danna, after all, did very well with Lee’s films like Ice Storm and Ride With The Devil.  So why not Brokeback Mountain? Well, Lee chose Santiago Santaolalla for that gig and they both won Oscars for their work.

Well, I am curious about this because Danna has this knack for mixing the traditional Hollywood motion picture music with its big orchestra with native rhythms in unusual ways. The presentation seems complex, check out Girl Interrupted but then ends up very engaging, like Capote or 500 Days of Summer, which by the way also has an excellent soundtrack of pop songs.

Of course, Danna later on became Lee’s choice to do The Life of Pi and they, too, became not only Academy Award winners, but also Golden Globe winners for their work in the picture. It was particularly fascinating in Danna’s case because he blended Indian folk melodies with the orchestra that also made use of traditional Indian instruments. Watch The Life of Pi again and listen to the fascinating result.

Now, again I say I am curious about Brokeback Mountrain because the story is set in the heartland of America. I wondered how Danna would use country and and bluegrass and rockabilly rhythms in new ways with his favorite orchestra.  And not to forget, how he would have used the fiddle and the banjo and most of all the guitar in his arrangements.

Danna and Brokeback Mountain did not happen but I got to find out how he will combine the sounds of American country with the soaring Hollywood soundtrack.  It is just what he got to do for the new picture A Dog’s Way Home. I know it is a dog movie and as manipulative as ever. It does not seem to be an Academy Award candidate, well, we will find out next year. But the story follows the odyssey of the dog Bella on her two-year journey home across America.

The movie stars Jonah Hauer-King, Ashley Judd and the voice of Bryce Dallas Howard as Bella. It tells the story of a mixed breed pup separated from her stray mother and then nursed by a wild cat. She luckily gets adopted by a young man and his mother who is a war veteran and has PTSD. But Bella’s happiness is short-lived as there is this city ordinance in Denver, Colorado, that prevents pet lovers from owning pitbulls.

Bella does not in any way look like a pitbull but she has some pitbull in her and will be taken and probably euthanized by the government because of that silly ordinance.  To prevent this from happening, Bella is taken to New Mexico where she has to stay until the problem about doggie discrimination at Mile-High City is fixed. But the feisty little girl will not stay put and goes off on the journey home. 

Prepare to get all teary-eyed watching Bella on her great, difficult and very dangerous adventure. And director Charles Martin Smith really milks this to the bone.  Bella, chained and thirsty, scavenging in dumpsters. Bella in an avalanche. Bella adopted by a homeless man or a nice gay couple. Bella making friends with a baby cougar. Etc. etc. But since Bella is walking across America, Danna’s score has the appropriate sounds. He did a great job and if you will listen closely, there is the banjo and the ukulele and the piano, of course, and other American instruments, with the orchestra providing music for this sweet, thoroughly heartwarming tale.

Academy Award bit: Incidentally, perennial nominees make up this year’s list of nominees for Best Motion Picture Score at the Academy Awards. These are Ludwig Goransson, who also did Creed for his work in Black Panther; the great jazz artist Terence Blanchard for The BlaKkKlansman; Nicholas Britell of Moonlight fame for If Beale Street Could Talk; Alexandre Desplat, who also scored The Shape of Water, for Isle of Dogs; and Marc Shaiman, who wrote the popular musical Hairspray for Mary Poppins Returns.