Something for Thursday

YouTube recently served up a bunch of clips from the 2000 movie The Patriot, the Revolutionary War epic starring Mel Gibson. It’s a movie I’ve always had problems with…it is historically bad to an appalling degree, and it’s one of those movies that spends so much time and effort making its villain hateful that it isn’t really satisfying at the end when he finally gets what’s coming to him. And yet, The Patriot is really watchable, and parts of it are really very good.

One of those parts is the score by John Williams. Here’s the end credits suite, which captures the main themes from the movie. Is it kind of cliched, particularly in the middle when it goes to literal drum-and-fife? Yes…but the whole movie is like that.