Buy it... if you don't want to live as Carter Burwell's normal self for fifteen minutes, for his music in this movie is uncharacteristically tonal, tender, and charming, a cleverly sinister and tragic approach to the demented personality of the script.

Avoid it... if you expect anything in Burwell's counter-intuitive approach to directly emulate the bizarre nature of the film's wacky plot, especially in the small doses available on album.

Burwell

Being John Malkovich: (Carter Burwell) There really is no way that a movie like Being John Malkovich could be summarized coherently in the introduction to this review of its music. There are rarely productions as wildly unique as this one, the result of a demented Charlie Kaufman script that postulates that a person can enter a tube on a secret floor of a New York office building and live the life of actor John Malkovich. The actor plays himself in this fantasy tale, and he eventually discovers this bizarre portal and enters it himself, producing one of the most awkward scenes in the history of film. Running the portal is a destitute puppeteer played by John Cusack, who becomes obsessed with using the tube as means of carrying on a sexual relationship with the female co-worker with whom he charges $200 for anyone who wants fifteen minutes inside the portal. When his wife (Cameron Diaz) ends up carrying on a transgender affair with the co-worker instead, the situation becomes even more complicated. Malkovich, among others, eventually seek to use the powers of the portal to achieve immortality. Cameo appearances abound, throwing fantasy and reality into a constant battle of wits. There really isn't much sense to any of it, and Malkovich was initially horrified when he read the script. Several studios flatly rejected the film's premise, though Francis Ford Coppola assisted his son-in-law, aspiring director Spike Jonze, in finding a studio (and Malkovich) and the project was widely hailed as a success. Outstanding critical response led to several major awards nominations, and Being John Malkovich has since carried the label of cult classic with it. Because the 1999 film was a relatively low budget production, its soundtrack wasn't a glamorous affair. Aside from a song by Bjork and a couple of source placements, the music of the film is defined by Carter Burwell's rather restrained score. The film represented the initiation point of a collaboration between the composer and director that included multiple entries over the next dozen years. Burwell had risen to mainstream status earlier in the decade but maintained a reputation for unconventional and challenging writing styles. That said, he did write a subset of scores that utilized a more palatable dramatic approach, and Being John Malkovich and Gods and Monsters could be considered siblings in that regard. Given how downright strange Being John Malkovich can be, it's a bit remarkable how Burwell's score was applied as a calming and connecting source of comfort in an atmosphere of pointless psycho-nonsense.

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Despite the fantasy element at work in Being John Malkovich, Burwell approaches it project with a surprisingly tender and affable tone. There are singular moments of rushing suspense to address the quick scenes of action or confrontation (most of which confined to the more standard Burwell piano rhythms of "Subcon Chase" on album), but on the whole, the score is content to remain positively accessible in style. It is unusual for Burwell to write without infusing the challenge of broken chords or atypical meters in his work, but that trademark is nearly absent in Being John Malkovich. The ensemble consists of a moderate orchestra highlighted by gorgeously personal piano. String layers, defined by sappy violins and yearning celli, produce a deceiving sense of intimate tragedy in nearly every cue. The score's dominant theme is expressed in "Puppet Love" and countless times thereafter. Its slightly waltz-like movement and chamber-appropriate rendering are sadly innocent in almost a creepy way, mirroring the desperation of Cusack's character and his ultimate fate. This theme's development seemingly spends its entire duration evolving into the ultra-fluffy version heard in "Future Vessel," an appropriately baby-like cue (complete with the rattling of an infant's toy as a percussive effect) with xylophone and harp to address the new mind in which the character finds himself trapped. Aside from this recognition of fate in Burwell's tone, there isn't much narrative arc explored in the score, the composer content to quietly convey tragic melodrama without branching off into many diversions. The romantic sub-theme in "Lotte Makes Love" (reprising the enthusiastic conclusion from Conspiracy Theory) and Danny Elfman-like rowdiness of "Monkey Memories" are the exceptions. Otherwise, the score is an awkwardly beautiful listening experience, "Future Vessel" among Burwell's single prettiest career compositions. Expect a very subdued, dreamy listening experience on album, though, with less than 30 minutes of material surrounded by two versions of the Bjork song (which better addresses the bizarre tone of the film), a source licensing of a Bartok piece, and "Malkovich Masterpiece Remix," which is the album's nod to the movie's humor by taking the music heard during the scene in which Malkovich enters the tube himself and layering it with contemporary rhythms and quotes from other scenes in the film. The album, in the end, is a decent souvenir of the film (especially with the mind-blowing insert notes consisting of script excerpts), though Burwell's score by itself will appeal to a different emotional need than the movie as a whole. Regardless of its sinister undertones of tragedy, expect to hear few entries more delightfully charming from the composer. ***   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For Carter Burwell reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.84 (in 19 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 2.76 (in 9,936 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.