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Ridley Scott’s 1992 historical epic 1492: Conquest Of Paradise was a box office turkey and critical flop. The liberties it took with the story of its subject, the explorer and brutal coloniser Christopher Columbus, haven’t held up well either.
In turn, the soundtrack by Vangelis barely got a mention when the obituaries were written on the synth wizard’s passing in 2022 – though that didn’t stop original versions fetching an arm and a leg on Discogs.
This reissue at least dismisses financial concerns for anyone who wants to own a physical copy. Artistically, it’s a different matter. While a soundtrack can never be entirely extricated from the picture it accompanies, it should be able to stand alone as a work on its own merit. But the 1492 score is a curate’s egg.
Certainly the main title theme is as whistleable as a Gilbert & Sullivan opera and as adaptable to sporting events as The White Stripes’ inescapable Seven Nation Army; and indeed, the Vangelis piece has been used by everyone from football team Sheffield Wednesday to rugby side Wigan Warriors.
Like the best of his music, it’s grand, effortless and immediately indelible in the memory banks once it’s slipped in. The quasi-Latin lyrics might be all but meaningless; that doesn’t prevent the tune from being impossible to stop humming.
Conquest Of Paradise had clear commercial value, topping the charts in five European regions, although it only reached No.60 in the UK. Intriguingly, Scott preferred to use another piece, Hispañola, throughout the film: an understated dramatic soundbed fraught with the right kind of cinematic tension, featuring flamenco guitars set over an eerie drone with enigmatic cante flamenco wailed over the top. Moxita And The Horse is imbued with a similar sense of mystery.
These stronger moments are offset by sculpted mood music that hasn’t aged well, such as Monastery Of La Rabiba, with Vangelis’ familiar CS-80 top lines feeling strangely out of place against the chimes and panpipes that passed for atmospheric scene-building in the mid-90s. And Pinta, Nina, Santa Maria (Into Eternity) has a cloying sheeniness that comes off as corny more than emotionally resonant.
It’s usually 80s music that’s expected to date badly – though Vangelis’ magnificent Blade Runner and Chariots Of Fire soundtracks are far more sympathetic to the modern era than some of the over-inflated soufflés that pass as cinematic wallpaper here. Which probably explains why it got short shrift in those eulogies in 2022.
1492: Conquest Of Paradise is on sale now via Rhino.
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