Sam is twelve years old and loves to collect stories and strange phenomena. He wants to know about UFOs and scary films, aircrafts and ghosts. He also wants to know what it's like to have a sip of beer, to sneak your first drag on a cigarette, to kiss a girl for the first time... Sam wants to know what teenagers feel like, because he will not live to be one. He has Leukaemia, and even though adults reply with ambiguity and try to avoid some subjects, Sam wants to know all the facts and details concerning death. He is willing to find out the answers to the questions that nobody wants to answer, and he decides to write a book. A book that will be a diary about himself, but also a "scientific investigation" with observations, lists of proven facts about things that someday he will do before he dies...

As the first track played on Ways to Live Forever, and given the subject matter of the movie, I was expecting to be thrust into an emotional journey full of tracks that would move me. The first track sounded promising, but ends up going nowhere.

And, it would seem, emotionally this score peaks at the first track. There's very little here to get excited about and what is mainly on offer is rather bland filler material. The main piano theme that appears throughout this score (most notably on 'The Idea for the Book', 'Kayleigh' and 'Remember Forever') is promising, but sadly it's never built upon.

The other notable theme, which is at the centre of 'Don't Ask Questions' and 'Remember Forever', sounds very much like a watered down version of Ludovico Einaudi's 'La Linea Scura' but again just as it's starting to get interesting it stops.

While it is not a bad score, I couldn't help thinking more emotion could have been pumped into the music. What we end up with is a soundtrack that hardly evokes any emotion from the listener.

5

Darren Rea