Buy it... if you want to trace most of Hans Zimmer's enduring and arguably superior output from 1989 to 1994 back to its origin, because Rain Man was the initiation point for a wide variety of the composer's later techniques.

Avoid it... if the eleven minutes of Zimmer's likable, optimistic score on the 1988 commercial product isn't enough and you expect the 2010 limited edition album or various score-only bootlegs to provide a consistent, decent sounding presentation of the score's prettier parts.

Zimmer

Rain Man: (Hans Zimmer) The pride of Hollywood in early 1989 was Barry Levinson's Rain Man, the top grossing film of the previous year and winner of all the major Academy Awards. A compelling script tackled the subject of autism in a very careful but unusual way. Tom Cruise plays an upstart car dealer of questionable character who intends to inherit several million dollars from his estranged father, but discovers after the man's death that the money was given to a brother he never knew he had. That long lost brother is Dustin Hoffman in one of his award-winning roles, having studied autism significantly before expertly portraying all the mannerisms of the condition in his performance. The younger, successful brother takes the older, frightened one across the country to take part in custody legalities (so that he can acquire the money), but after exploiting the Hoffman character's memorization abilities in Las Vegas, he eventually cares enough for his sibling to shift his focus to the care of the man. It's a heart-warming tale dependent on a smart script and superb acting performances, and it was a project blessed early and often by its studio. One area in which Levinson was unsure how to proceed was the score. An array of songs was already set to be placed in Rain Man, many of which comprising the commercial album release for the production. But he ended up taking a chance on newcomer Hans Zimmer for the task after his wife had heard the composer's ethnic music for A World Apart, a score that Zimmer continues to consider among his most significant. None of his works changed his life as much as Rain Man, however, for the assignment would lead to a surprising Oscar nomination and several consecutive years of work on highly successful films (both critically and in worldwide grosses). To this point in his career, Zimmer had been operating out of London and collaborating with composer Stanley Myers to learn about a scoring industry he had always admired. He was still producing his scores on arrays of synthesizers, sometimes with acoustic soloists, and pushing the limits of development in the application of sampled orchestral sounds to light rock environments (among other genres). For Rain Man, the formula for Zimmer wasn't much different, teaming with assistant and eventual Media Ventures regular Nick Glennie-Smith to provide music primarily performed on Zimmer's Fairlight CMI synthesizer and steel drums. The score also features pan pipes and female vocals of a gospel tone as the anchors of its two disparate personalities. More important than the instrumentation, as was often the case for Zimmer at this time, is the style that the composer brought to the film.

An abundance of style is indeed what has kept this score so popular for so long. When attempting to capture the essence of Rain Man, Zimmer made a conscious effort to keep the score both personable and quirky. "It was a road movie, and road movies usually have gangly guitars or a bunch of strings," he recalled much later. "I kept thinking, 'don't be bigger than the characters. Try to keep it contained.' The Raymond character [Hoffman] doesn't actually know where he is. The world is so different to him. He might as well be on Mars. So, why don't we just invent our own world music for a world that doesn't really exist?" As a result, Zimmer wrote a score that concentrates on propelling the film's sense of movement while defying a genre as much as it crosses cultural boundaries. It moves with a slight hint of the rhythm and keyboarding that would develop into his reggae style for Cool Runnings. The affable combination of soothing keyboarding and percussion would translate directly into his True Romance adaptation work and others. The exotic sound of Rain Man ranges from the plucked, oriental tones that later informed Black Rain and Beyond Rangoon to the gorgeous pan pipes that evolved through several Zimmer scores until reaching their maturation in The Lion King. The wild gospel vocal accents for the Las Vegas scenes here are best emulated by portions of Point of No Return. The varied combination of synthetic and real percussion was a precursor to The Power of One. Some of these sounds actually grew out of A World Apart, but as any serious Zimmer collector will know, the majority of his music from 1989 to 1994 has some connection back to Rain Man. The only usual element in his music of the period that doesn't have any role in this score is the electric guitar, which traces instead (in the mainstream, at least) to Black Rain. The attractive aspect of this score is not only the intriguing combination of sounds for both lead personalities, but also the simple and pretty demeanor of the main theme for Hoffman's character. Cruise's more flamboyant persona is afforded its only real spark of life in the slightly-rock inspired Las Vegas cue (with early ensemble choral hints as well), but the score concentrates mostly on the older brother's unusual journey. The rhythms and progressions in the theme are contemporary enough to cover both characters, and the only truly foreign sound to be heard (in early cues, naturally) is an Australian didgeridoo effect. While Zimmer's main theme on pan pipes is best remembered by its accompaniment of the hip, keyboarded rhythms, the idea is most beautiful when conveyed on its own (or with slight secondary motifs, such as the oriental idea that would later sneak into Toys, strangely enough).

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The first half of the score often explores soft variations on this theme with satisfyingly relaxing results. There isn't a tremendous amount of score material in Rain Man, but Zimmer's contribution certainly deserved more than just eleven minutes on the commercial soundtrack release. The first of Zimmer's two cues on that product combines some of the more compelling and soft thematic portions from the first half of the film. The second cue merges the snazzy, roaring Las Vegas cue (in a different mix from what was heard in the film) with a return to the lovely theme for the closing credits. For any true fan of either Rain Man or Zimmer's career, however, there are too many variations on the main theme left off of this product. Several bootlegs sprouted up in the later 1990's, eventually supplanted by one leaking of the recording sessions that reached over 48 minutes in length. This collection of cues isn't particularly well edited and is padded by some alternate takes, recordings of the pan pipes or vocal tracks alone, or dialogue (with profanity, can you imagine!) between Zimmer and Glennie-Smith in the studio. Muffled sound quality also remains a major issue, too. In late 2010, enthusiasts of the composer rejoiced in the news that Rain Man was to be legitimately released by Perseverance Records in a limited 2,000 copy pressing. That product contains the complete score minus some of the aforementioned padding on the bootlegs. Despite producer Robin Esterhammer's best efforts, however, this album likewise suffers from the lack of acceptable source tapes. Despite some cleaning of the analog source (which is recognized as being "really crappy" right on the packaging), the presentation sounds only slightly superior to that of the bootlegs, with distortion associated with bloated gain levels a problem throughout. Audiophiles will be appropriately horrified. As such, the eleven minutes of music on the old Capitol commercial album (included on the bootlegs) remains the only source of truly clear music from this score. It's a bit odd, in fact, to figure that the assembly of the Perseverance album would have benefited the most by simply using the existing Capitol CD as the best available source for parts of their own product. While it's great to have the entirety of Rain Man officially released, the search will undoubtedly continue for some miraculous revelation of better master elements. For die-hard collectors, a combination of the Perseverance and Capitol albums will be the best available option, replacing the Perseverance cues with the available Capitol material. Another way of looking at the album situation for Rain Man is to collect the majority of Zimmer's other early works; that way, you'll hear nearly every aspect of this important score in his career emulated or developed into arguably superior variations. Regardless, the spirited and optimistic main theme from Rain Man will always be a fan favorite. ****   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For Hans Zimmer reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.09 (in 80 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.08 (in 253,581 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.