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Meet Joe Black: (Thomas Newman) Having spent an
eternity watching humanity and ending its miserable little individual
existences, are we really to believe that Death himself would be as
hopelessly uninformed and boring as Brad Pitt? Where was Christopher
Lloyd when this film was made? The story of
Meet Joe Black would
have you believe in Pitt, and despite a solid cast and crew, very little
about the film convinced critics and audiences when it debuted in 1998.
Inspired by part of the plot of a 1934 movie,
Death Takes a
Holiday, the story poses the question of what would happen if Death
spent a few weeks on Earth, enjoying the pleasures of humanity while
granting an old man a reprieve from his inevitable heart attack. The
film deals mostly with the love affair that Death has while human,
dragging the story to its own belated death after three seemingly
endless hours of running time. Pacing was the primary problem with the
film, with conversational cues taking forever to transpire, and while
the film eventually goes through all the right emotional moves, it lacks
the depth of character to enchant you. One of the technical aspects of
the film that was highly praised at the time was Thomas Newman's score,
hailed as a success due mostly to a grand use of orchestral theme at the
end of the picture. Newman had flirted on the outskirts of large scale
romantic dramas for several years, often including a flourish or two of
grand orchestral style in his scores for marginal films like
Phenomenon and
The Horse Whisperer. His consistently
strong era of
The Shawshank Redemption and
Little Women
had their own remarkable collection of cues each, but Newman's fans
continued to wait for the composer to break loose from the restraints of
either the period or the darkness of those earlier projects and write a
purely heartfelt romance score. Some of those fans still insist that
Meet Joe Black was that score, though others disagree. One thing
is certain:
Meet Joe Black is a trademark Thomas Newman score
through and through, saturated with the techniques and mannerisms that
have made him a collector's favorite in his more traditional orchestral
side.
There are essentially three parts of the
Meet Joe
Black score, two of which readily listenable and one that constantly
pulls down the overall product. The highlight is obviously the wholesale
offering of grand string romance, reaching its glorious crescendos of
string harmony and bold brass counterpoint in the final two score cues.
The sex scene of "Whisper of a Thrill" is a lengthy development of this
theme that also includes the more mystical, percussion-tingling element
of Death's persona that Newman explores a few times in the work
(including the eerie "Served Its Purpose"). While the grand finale in
"The Next Place" is a show-stopper, it suffers from a prolonged paying
time that resorts to the doldrums of the atmospheric side of the score.
Given the length of the film, it's no surprise that most of the cues
from Newman are far less memorable atmospheric meanderings for woodwind,
piano, and whispering strings. Lengthy passages of barely audible
underscore are pleasantly rendered, but hardly interesting, especially
compared to the swinging interludes of comedy. The faster rhythms of the
light-hearted cues in
Meet Joe Black are arguably Newman doing
what he does best. Cues like "Fifth Ave." and "Everywhere Freesia" are
joyful and dancing; the dancing spirit of "Fifth Ave." alone raises the
score a notch and begs for more speculation of just how well Newman
could replace Rachel Portman on many of her heralded works. There's an
intangible element of enjoyment that shines in Newman's music when he
combines his traditional and plucked strings in such jaunty fashion, and
the personality of these short bursts of energy in
Meet Joe Black
attempt to steal your attention. The album suffers to some degree by its
arrangement of a few classic songs amongst the score; their instrumental
renditions eventually lead to a performance of "What a Wonderful World"
that most unfortunately breaks up Newman's two strong dramatic cues at
the end of the album. Overall, Newman provides all the right crescendos
and themes at the correct times, but the score suffers from the same
prolonged and largely hushed development that doomed the film. A lack of
warmth in the orchestra's performance, harmed by a relatively dull
recording quality (the opposite of
The Shawshank Redemption's
sharpness), cause
Meet Joe Black to lack a genuine sense of
romance necessary for it to thrive.
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| Bias Check: | For Thomas Newman reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating
is 3.14 (in 28 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.13
(in 53,317 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert notes contain extensive credits, but no information about the score or film.
