The Road Home soundtrack

[bhull3]

Nĭhăo,

I just saw The Road Home' by Zhang Yi Mou. It is a great film! Like my mission to find 'The Third Eye' by Zheng Jun, I am trying to locate the sountrack for this film. Any suggestions? A friend of mine will be going back home to Tiawan next month, so I could ask him to look out for it, but I don't want him to spend his family time on something like this.

xièxie,

Bruce

[Chungalin]

Great you liked this movie. Let me recommend you "Not One Less" from the same director, it also has music from the same composer San Bao 三宝.

The soundtracks from "The Road Home" and "Not One Less" were released along in a single CD, by the USA label Milan. Here you have all the info from my website devoted to soundtracks all over the world:

http://www.scorefilia.com/sf/cd/00/398.html

Unfortunately this CD seems out of print now and you'll have to try luck on secondary markets (eBay, Half...). Another chance is a recent compilation from Milan Europe that contains a representative amount of music from several Zhang Yimou's movies, including the two above:

http://www.scorefilia.com/sf/cd/01/547.html

Let me know anyway if your friend has found anything in Taiwan. As far as I know, very little film music is released there, at least the serious film music I appreciate, not just pop songs compilations.

Good luck.

[Lu]

Taiwan has second hand cd stores, maybe your friend can try there if it's out of print.

[gougou]

It's been a while since I've watched that movie, but isn't the sound track in large parts the same as Titanic's?

[Chungalin]

Very interesting point, gougou. Although there aren't any clear plagiarism to the James Horner's score to Titanic, I must agree with you that the STYLE is somehow related, but no melody is a direct "Copy+Paste" from Titanic.

There's a curious thing I detected in relation to this. At the beginning of the movie, still in the black&white part, when the son is talking to his mother at home, you can actually see two posters from Titanic on the walls of the room! Even more, one of them is a promotional poster of the CD "Back to Titanic", which was something like a "more music from Titanic". That's a direct reference to the music of Titanic, not just to the movie. Isn't that curious? Casual?

I think that San Bao may be a fan of James Horner work and when asked to score the Zhang Yimou's film he adopted the same vein of romanticism, BUT using his own skills and adding some traditional instruments to reach even greater levels of emotiveness (take as example the erhu when Di's bowl gets broken, wow!).

[trevelyan]

Oddly enough, I'm watching the film now. No help on the soundtrack at all. Just chipping in to second all of the priase and encourage anyone who hasn't seen it to take the time and watch it.

[laolee]

I noticed the poster too, but I must be the last person in the world who hasn't seen Titanic yet. Now, it starts to make sense!