: (Danny Elfman) Based on a true
legal case, Jonathan Harr's story is translated to the big screen by
director Steven Zaillian, who, after screenwriting
is a commentary about
the overarching legal issues facing American society, and forges its
message through one case (and its parties) in particular. It's less of a
courtroom drama than it is the study of one attorney (played with only
minimal success by John Travolta) and his transformation as his
motivations and intentions change from those shaped by the legal
industry to those shaped by the heart and soul. It's a redeeming, though
still sobering examination of how badly average citizens are being
screwed by big industry, and how the legal system often doesn't provide
the satisfaction in resolving that issue. It's easy to see that composer
Danny Elfman, replacing Ennio Morricone, looked at the project as one
for which his music would address the soul of the picture rather than
any larger issue. His scores of the late 1990's had mostly abandoned the
fuller, Gothic nature of his earlier classics, and he was intent on
writing either quirky scores that better suited his roots, or those that
used non-traditional methods to achieve equally unconventional goals.
While both tactics would serve him with Academy Award nominations in
1997, fans were still undecided about Elfman's direction when
fulfilled the expectations of a certain zaniness, even in the
face of a predominantly serious film about soul reflection.
Without a doubt,
A Civil Action was a polarizing
score at the time of its release, for it features Elfman trying so hard
to provide an original sound for a character drama that he actually ends
up being quite predictable. In his career,
A Civil Action is the
score that most closely resembles the artistic, rhythmic, and
instrumental chaos of Thomas Newman during the same era. Newman's
bizarre orchestrations and awkward movements were a hot commodity at the
time, and Elfman strays very close to Newman's territory in parts of
A Civil Action, all the while maintaining a substantial number of
his own trademark styles. Even the film's handling of music is
unconventional; the opening twenty minutes are absent any underscore,
supporting the theory of Elfman's music identifying itself with internal
resolution. Thematically, the score has two or three recurring ideas,
but these identities are better established through the use of fragments
of rhythm and instrumentation rather than a traditional harmonic
progression. The instrumentation makes
A Civil Action what it is,
with an electric bass, Hammond organ, electric guitar, and gospel voices
providing a touch of Southern flavor whereas the rest of the score
features a marginal orchestral ensemble (usually led by light strings)
with xylophones, a plethora of other light metallic percussion elements,
and a surprising usage of glass. It's not clear how much of the eerie
mid-tone sounds in
A Civil Action are indeed the glass
performances and how many are synthetic, but their influence on the
cerebral tone of the score is significant.
Also of particular note in the score is Elfman's
handling of voices, which varies greatly throughout each cue. He uses
them, by his own admission, like any other instrument, requiring a
significant range of boy and adult choral performances sometimes as
striking as the quick exhales of
To Die For and, near the end,
straying closer to the majesty of the more fluid performances in
Edward Scissorhands. The gospel influence in the latter stages,
over small band elements, is an enjoyably unique entry in Elfman's
career. The staggered movements in
A Civil Action reprise
rhythmic usage in previous scores, including both
Men in Black
and
Good Will Hunting, interestingly, with the score being most
closely related to the latter effort in terms of Elfman's overall
production. Each cue is like its own rhythmic experiment, sometimes
exploding the pure chaos for the full ensemble; a cue like "Night Work,"
with its rampaging piano, is frightfully unlistenable. But the larger
problem with
A Civil Action is the fact that for all its creative
meanderings, each somewhat interesting in their own way, the score has
no cohesive soul itself. It's a score that really could have used some
kind of thematic of larger rhythmic identity to make it more than simply
a rambling collection of likeable, but rather predictable Elfman
stream-of-consciousness stylings. For fans of Elfman's late 1990's
experimentation,
A Civil Action will be a very rewarding score
with countless subtleties for you to admire. Otherwise, it surprisingly
risks boredom.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
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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 153,889 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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