There are two things whipping up my excitement and delight at slipping this CD out of it’s plastic wrapper, opening the case and carefully placing into my CD player. And they are Debbie Wiseman and Sheila Hancock. Both are in different spheres of the arts but I love them both equally.
Sheila Cameron Hancock CBE has always been so watchable for me, her striking face is unique and she is even more watchable now at 85 years of age. An award winning actress – she has done TV, stage including musicals, and film. She is also a writer. I first saw her as a comedian with whip sharp timing and an amazing laugh. In straight roles her acting is immersive and far removed from the physicality of her comedy, it’s measured and it’s all in those expressive eyes. So it’s no wonder that she was chosen for the title role of this film.
Debbie Wiseman MBE is one my most favourite composers, she has a distinct, elegant style and conducts most of her own soundtrack recordings as she does here. She beautifully captures emotion with a subtleness which takes you by surprise, I have often been reduced to tears by a Wiseman score due to the sheer power of her capturing the very heart of the story that is being told.
From The Press Release for Edie:
“Debbie’s music captures the soaring spirit of a lost soul reborn by the beauty of nature and smell of adventure but most of all by the human friendship of a kind young man.” –
Simon Hunter Writer & Director of Edie
Edie stars Sheila Hancock and Kevin Guthrie and features a truly moving performance from Hancock in the title role, an elderly woman, who in the aftermath of the death of her controlling husband, decides to fulfil a life-long dream of recapturing the magic she had as a young girl by climbing a Scottish mountain. Edie employs Jonny (Kevin Guthrie – Dunkirk, Whisky Galore) to help her prepare for the gruelling climb ahead and this sparks a surprising friendship.
We open with sprightly strings and a solo guitar which introduces the score’s 12 note leitmotif in Training Day. When the pace picks up it brims with a mix of excitement and optimism. To Lochinvar with Johnny brings a comedic feel with timing which echo’s the tango whilst Alone in The Past, as you would expect, is melancholic. It’s descending notes perfectly framing deep feelings and apprehension.
Searching For A Bed is a very clever deconstruction of the score’s theme with opening harp and guitar and later, rolling optimistic strings . In New Clothes, New Life the clarinet picks up the leitmotif in this sublime short and slow cue and by now we are fully into Edie’s head with all it’s aspiration and trepidation. Heading Off Into The Wilds meanders around the main them with a single horn signalling loneliness. An Evening Row rolls in with a dramatic, dark pitch which flows into the ponderous Can’t Go Back.
It ends with Edie, a character cue depicting the triumph of this journey through rolling drums and brass but ends quietly with the haunting leitmotif as if Edie is saying ‘I have done it, I can move forward now’.
This soundtrack is our journey with Edie and all the complex emotions she feels on the way but it still retains the optimism and the yearning to complete it. It’s gentle in it’s delivery. It’s short and uncomplicated theme running through the cues with finesse and purpose. I can’t praise it enough.
TRACK LISTING
1. Training Day
2. To Lochinvar With Jonny
3. Night Of Wonder, Morning Of Trouble
4. Alone In the Past
5. Searching For A Bed
6. Packing Up For Adventure
7. New Clothes, New Life
8. Midnight Stranger
9. Heading Off Into The Wilds
10. An Evening Row
11. Hanging In There
12. Can’t Go Back
13. Edie
Label: Silva Screen Records
Filmic Tracks 