Buy it... if you seek an intelligent but often difficult cross between Danny Elfman's own "Serenade Schizophrana" concert piece and the contemplative, hazy churning of Philip Glass' most commonly associated film music tendencies.

Avoid it... if you expect to leave this listening experience with anything other than a disheartening, somber mood, for Elfman uses both the lightly devious and heavy brooding of his familiar style to coldly underline the sickness on screen.

Elfman

Standard Operating Procedure: (Danny Elfman) The most remarkable aspect of Errol Morris' lifetime of work in the genre of documentary filmmaking is his ability to present a subject without any guiding comment whatsoever. He allows the audience to process the cold truths he conveys and assign their own perception to what they see. This continued to be the case with Standard Operating Procedure, a mechanical 2008 examination of the famous photographs taken of detainee abuse by American forces at the dreaded Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Unlike many of the documentaries that delve into the unpleasant actions in America's wars of the 2000's, this one provides no answers or opinions other than those by the relevant people collected for interviews (sometimes paid, though still likely truthful). Morris even acquired an interview with some of those seen in the photos, allowing a cloudy but fascinating picture of the events to unfold. There are hints that powers higher of up the chain of command were likely responsible for the existence of this scandal, but despite a short scene at the start showing footage of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, that mystery is not revealed here. Morris' inclusion of grainy video footage of the torturous photo sessions was the film's best selling point. Still, however, the audience for Standard Operating Procedure was limited because of these grim, graphic visuals; no plethora of positive reviews or nominations at film festivals could gain the production a wider viewership. It was suggested by Roger Ebert that the entire tone of the film, absent and color in the rest of the production elements, fell completely on the shoulders of Danny Elfman's score. The composer claimed to have been impressed by Morris' work since his acclaimed Gates of Heaven in 1978, and Morris likewise had admired Elfman's music throughout the past two decades. The long collaboration between Morris and composer Philip Glass yielded to an opportunity for Elfman and Morris to finally join forces, and the resulting music is indeed a fascinating study on its own. Much commentary was offered in 2008 about the similarities between the style of Elfman's music for Standard Operating Procedure and that of Glass, though most of those resemblances are limited to the fact that Elfman chose to tackle the assignment with the flowing, almost disembodied rhythmic structures that have defined much of Glass' work. Other than this basic similarity, Elfman's music here is distinctly reminiscent of his own history.

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The specific words used by Ebert to describe Elfman's shaping of Standard Operating Procedure were "sad," "elegiac," and "relentless." These are apt descriptors, though "mechanical" needs to be added to that list. While Elfman alters the tone of each rhythmic cue slightly, there is no doubt that the constant movement gives the listener the impression that there are wheels turning in the military and intelligence system that are unstoppable and that the events seen on screen here are just part of an ongoing set of behavior accepted in the dark corners of those institutions. The major difference between Glass' usual methodology and the one here is that Elfman provides several traditional melodies that are staggered in their progressions to match the underlying rhythmic motion. These themes are so elongated in that process that they may not stick with the listener long after the score has concluded, but they nevertheless keep the environment almost continuously harmonic. The ensemble is not of great size; in full performances such as the disheartening "Main Titles: Vacation in Iraq," the sparse number of musicians is exposed. But for the perpetual churning effect, a heavy emphasis on intimate, dry string recordings and occasional help from woodwinds and piano is sufficient. The sensibility of the work owes much to Elfman's 2006 concert composition "Serenade Schizophrana," to which Standard Operating Procedure finally connects his film music. The range of emotions in the work starts with the glum and strained, heard in the portions of the work like "The Infamous Pyramid" that incorporate either dissonance or electronic accents, and extends to the sickeningly jolly, which is summed up best in "Photos," a cue that merges the synthetic vocal tones familiar to Elfman and John Ottman's work with tuba and saxophone performances that tug at the same strings as The Nightmare Before Christmas. The instrumental creativity here is not as pronounced as in A Simple Plan and other Elfman works that accomplish much with limited ensembles, but there is usually a presence of some form of tinkling or struck percussive element in each cue in Standard Operating Procedure to extend the soundscape. In fact, it is in this portion of the orchestration that Elfman's score makes the most damaging statement about the images on screen, offering a sickeningly optimistic set of instrumental tones over an otherwise morbid and restrained bass. Overall, Standard Operating Procedure is a score that will hypnotize in some of its longer rhythmic portions (and especially in the first track on its album), but on the whole begs for intellectual appreciation over effortless enjoyment. ***   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

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