An acclaimed film directed by Hans Petter Moland, The Beautiful Country tells the remarkable story of a Vietnamese refugee's quest to find his parents and the hardship he faces along the way.  Produced by Terrence Malick, it's attracted much praise.  Scoring the film was Zbigniew Preisner, in his second collaboration with director Moland after Aberdeen.  Preisner is one of the most intellectual film composers (unsurprising, perhaps, for the composer of choice of Krzysztof Kieslowski) but has been pretty quiet recently.  He decided to shun Hollywood and work only on independently-made films some time ago (probably wisely deciding that mainstream American cinema was not the ideal showcase for his talents) and chooses his projects with care; The Beautiful Country is only his eighth project of the decade, and the music was recorded almost two years before the album has been released.  He hasn't worked on anything since.

Preisner's music for The Beautiful Country is an intriguing east-meets-west combination.  Needless to say, it is a far cry from most Hollywood composers' approaches to such projects (which is to have distinctly western music played on Chinese flutes and an erhu, or something) - it's neither authentically eastern nor authentically western, with Preisner adapting his own pretty unique style to fit the film.  The score is anchored around an arresting, appropriately harrowing theme, frequently played by flute, sometimes with violin in a kind of duet.  It's a great theme which, typically for the composer, features brief fragmentary phrases separated by brief periods of silence, working very well indeed.

Elsewhere, Preisner uses a touching piano theme, again very subtle and slow, which is really quite beautiful; uses instruments like vibraphone, dulcimer and alto sax to create a wonderful atmosphere, suggesting "another place" without doing anything too direct; and frequently incorporates hand drums, again a particularly effective device.  There are one or two pieces of very light jazz, but Preisner keeps the orchestra in place to ensure a smooth progression.  The Beautiful Country is a highly-impressive score which builds from one place and ends up in another, with the composer constructing the music with intelligence and not a small amount of emotion.  It's been too long since the last Preisner score; hopefully it won't be too long until the next one.  This one comes highly recommended.