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| Elfman |
The Circle: (Danny Elfman) Anyone who has been
tempted to use a rifle to shoot down a random drone hovering over their
property will want to purchase crates of ammunition after watching the
2017 movie,
The Circle. Based on the 2013 novel of the same name,
the film explores issues of corporatocracy and privacy as they relate to
social media companies exposing literally every little detail of our
lives for the supposed benefit of society as a whole. The thought
process of the corporate villains in
The Circle not only
postulates that they can document and share every moment of a person's
life but also run all essential government services. Tom Hanks plays the
inspirational, charismatic, and terrifying leader of the company, called
"The Circle," while Emma Watson starts as a low-level employee who
eventually works her way up to stardom within the venture. Significant
differences between the book and film doomed the latter, much of the
humor and the hard, unlikable edge to the supposed heroine lost in the
adaptation. Regardless, the concept assumes technology that won't exist
because of physics and privacy laws, so the entire exercise is moot
outside of the character aspect, and even that is rather limp. The star
power of
The Circle made it a financial success, but both critics
and audiences regarded it extremely poorly. Director James Ponsoldt
returned to his composing collaborator from
The End of the Tour,
Danny Elfman, to provide the music for
The Circle. The composer
was at a point in his career when unconventional, lesser projects
beckoning quirky or electronic scores were more commonplace, and this
one definitely fits that mould. The composer approached the film with
synthetics in mind; even if the budget didn't demand them, the subject
matter certainly could. Not much else about Elfman's strategy for
The
Circle makes sense, though, as his music is either inconsequential
or really inappropriate in the movie. Rather than emphasize the struggle
for identity and personality in the characters, the composer went wild
with retro synthetics as an accent of perverse coolness for the concepts
represented by "The Circle." It's almost as if Elfman decided to offer
the brainwashing music for the surveillance element in the film rather
than the actual people involved or societal implications, the composer
rarely attempting to make the music sound even remotely organic, even if
synthetically so. It's the kind of work where you cannot tell from the
score alone what genre the film even belongs to, much less feel
compelled to care about it.
Elfman is known for employing some really creative and
oddball synthetic sounds in his wackier scores, and
The Circle
reaches back to terrible analog tones from the 1980's not appropriate
for this forward-looking story, causing significant friction with some
scenes. Keyboarding dominates, with burping rhythms and edgier
electronic scaping sounds joining occasional string-like
representations, celeste, guitar, and vocal manipulations to yield a
strangely backwards ambience. Elfman's execution of these sounds is not
sufficiently creepy in scenes that should be moderately suspenseful, his
clunky keyboarding more akin to his humorously terrible
Aliens,
Clowns & Geeks at times than this film's genre. Straight action
scenes like "Fog Attack" and "Finding Mercer" offer grating electronic
mayhem with little larger purpose. Almost just as frustrating as the
ill-conceived tone of Elfman's synthetics is his barely functional
thematic narrative. He conjures a main identity but doesn't apply it in
ways that make much sense in the story. Led initially by three pairs of
rising notes, this theme seems intentionally difficult to nail down
during all of "Into a Circle." It returns in "Conspiracy" with some
semblance of organic strings in chopping mode and more tentative in
"Chasing Amy" on piano over blurting rhythms. The theme starts to lose
cohesion in "Stolen Kayak," however, and it becomes longer identity that
receives more development in "Mae Takes Over," suggesting planning for
the maturation of the main character that never enunciates itself
clearly enough in the score's themes. More impactful is a surveillance
rhythm that develops out of minor third alternations throughout the work
that become more hypnotic as threats emerge. Its meandering piano line
over bubbly rhythmic blurting in "Inner Sanctum" is later barely hinted
in the rhythm of "Aftermath" before dominating the first half of
"Finding Mercer," interrupting nascent melodic material in "Toilet
Talk," and becoming almost exuberant at the outset of "Ascension." An
upbeat, somewhat chipper secondary theme bounces through "Wonderland,"
extends to an ascending thematic alternative in "Intake," and is
reprised in "Return to Wonderland." Otherwise, the score wanders through
unrelated singular ideas. The digitally prickly "Happy Little Robots" is
among the worst cues of Elfman's career, while the slurred tonalities of
"Happy Love Theme" make it stand, likely intentionally, among the
composer's worst love themes. An odd crescendo at the end of "Mae Takes
Over" with voice and guitar doesn't achieve any purpose. The "Simple
Gifts" song doesn't fit with the personality of the score, either. In
the end, this score is horrible in the film and will induce insanity on
its short album. Rarely do composers miss the tone and narrative of a
story so badly.
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| Bias Check: |
For Danny Elfman reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.16
(in 89 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.27
(in 153,897 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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