: (Danny Elfman) Among the many films
to explore the possibilities of choice through an alternate universe,
Brett Ratner's Christmas 2000 release
was a
predictable entry. Successful in life but having lost his soul, Nicolas
Cage's character is given an opportunity by an angel to view how his
life could have been different if he had married his college girlfriend
and been a poor family man. He is immediately horrified by the lack of
wealth, but eventually realizes the importance of the less tangible
elements and becomes a changed man.
underperformed
at the box office for Universal Pictures, and among the casualties of
this failure was a proper album treatment for Danny Elfman's heartfelt
score for the film. Having spent much of 2000 away from the spotlight
after resurrecting a fervor of interest in his career with 1999's
, Elfman and his music had elevated expectations in
2000, expectations not met with the lackluster
. The
lack of a commercial album for
has largely guided
the discussion about the score, making desperate seekers out of fans who
had longed for Elfman to return to the style of melancholy beauty that
had defined his early career. It was only a matter of time, some would
say, before Danny Elfman would once again receive an assignment for
which he would write eloquent music for a mystical fantasy film. The
common complaint of fans of Elfman's music from the early 1990's, of
course, was that he had abandoned his original orchestral tendency
towards overwhelmingly dark and emotional music of a grand scale. Part
of this transformation in Elfman's career was due to a voluntary path of
maturing tastes for the composer; he had been accepting jobs that
entailed working for films that really didn't call for that particular
tone and scope of music. With
, however, Elfman was
once again presented with a magical story dealing with deep character
issues, and he responded by tapping that early melodramatic sound and
infusing it into the modern sensibilities that had dominated his
late-90's works.
The commercial album for the film sold moderately well,
though the extent of Elfman's music on that product is restricted to
only about six minutes. The studio was pushing hard for the Seal song
from the film, "This Could Be Heaven," to be awarded with an Academy
Award nomination, likewise pushing Elfman's score as part of a dual
campaign for recognition. A promotional "for your consideration" album
of
The Family Man was filtered to AMPAS members in January of
2001, containing both the Seal song and a full expansion of Elfman's
score. The song is decent, and stood an outside chance of a nomination,
but whether or not you can tolerate the song depends on how much you
enjoy Seal's distinct voice. The Elfman score, on the other hand, is
exactly what a large number of his fans wanted to hear: a significant,
though partial return to the fully orchestral and choral majesty of his
efforts of the early 1990's. A fully realized theme of lament dominates
the half dozen most appealing cues. Often performed on solo woodwind or
a piano with string accompaniment, the theme is a delicate and wondrous
one. It inspires enough awe and beauty to revive thoughts of his darker,
gothic scores, but it never quite reaches the same powerful level of
despair and melancholy as many of the depressing themes (as some would
call them) from those older scores. The rolling lower woodwind and
acoustic guitar performances that blessed
Sommersby do make an
appearance early in the score. But instead of dwelling in sadness as we
all know Elfman enjoys doing, the score for
The Family Man has a
child-like spark of energy and optimism that fits well with the holiday
spirit of the film. The score doesn't become enveloped in the holidays
like
Scrooged, for instance, but
The Family Man does offer
a more balanced and conservative approach with the percussion that
normally symbolizes the time of year. The "Main Titles" cue, one of the
two tracks available on the commercial album, features perhaps the most
energetic and enthusiastic performance of the Christmas spirit, full of
prancing strings, ringing chimes and bells, and jingling
tambourines.
Because the promotional album does not name its tracks,
the analysis of the score that follows will reference track numbers
rather than cue titles. The fourth track (immediately following "Main
Titles") introduces the light children's choir that Elfman made famous
with
Edward Scissorhands, and its lofty and sensitive performance
here is no different in its mix. After a solid first four tracks of
score (during which its thematic material is well established), the next
ten short cues offer a more jumbled mix of a partial orchestra and
Elfman's electronic and solo expressions of
Instinct and
Good
Will Hunting. There are only a few cues of high volume in this
midsection of Elfman's score, and the choppy one-minute tracks feature
little to get excited about, with quietly meandering underscore
occasionally yielding to a strike of electronic drums. The eighteenth
track of score, however, introduces the fantastic conclusion of the
album. Of the last ten cues, only the twenty-fourth track, "Promise,"
was made available on the commercial album. That superior cue includes
one of the more gothic and haunting performances of theme, resounding
with the same classical string development as
Black Beauty. The
two tracks that will be of most interest to Elfman enthusiasts, though,
are not on the commercial album. The twenty-third track features a
remarkably beautiful performance of the title theme by a single flute
sonically silhouetted against the light choir. The five-minute cue
eventually culminates into a similar performance with the woodwinds and
choir joined by full strings and the piano. The final score track is the
gem of the promo album. After the previous, startling track of
electronic percussion (much like
Good Will Hunting), the final,
five-minute conclusion provides the fully matured rendition of the title
theme. The orchestra builds in momentum for three minutes before
unleashing the theme with the full grandeur of the finale from
Edward
Scissorhands. It was the best single Elfman cue since early in the
decade, and it will simply knock the socks off of any collector of the
composer's works.
On the whole,
The Family Man has its highlights,
and because of the highly contemplative nature of its middle portions,
as well as a few startling explosions of drum pads and other electronic
elements in the fifth and twenty-sixth cues, it isn't a completely
consistent listening experience. In terms of tone, because the score and
its primary theme are constructed with more major key progressions than
Elfman traditionally used for such scores as
Edward Scissorhands
and
Sommersby, it doesn't really produce the same depressing
result. Sure, there are openly bittersweet elements, but the theme for
The Family Man exquisitely takes flight with an overwhelming
sense of optimism and charm, evident in greater degrees as the score
progresses. In retrospect, the score is truly the best combination of
all of Elfman's styles of the 1990's rolled into one product.
Unfortunately, the composer wouldn't engage in the same wholesale,
emotional melodrama to a matching extent in the 2000's, only touching
briefly on the style in
Charlotte's Web (which is, along with
The Family Man, among the composer's best efforts of the decade).
The promotional album originally sold for hundreds of dollars on the
secondary market, though it didn't take long before bootlegs of that CD
began to filter out without the Seal song. An isolated score track on
the DVD release of the film increased these bootlegs in quantity. Your
decision on whether or not to pursue the score depends on your loyalty
to the strongly poetic side of Elfman's early works. And even though the
full score was already presented on the promo album before the
subsequent bootlegs, only 20 or so minutes of it comprise the beautiful
cues that demand repeat enjoyment. The other half of the score is still
listenable, representing the aforementioned, healthy and enjoyable
combination of Elfman's older orchestral styles and his newer,
electronically percussive ones. In the end, though, the spirit of the
score for
The Family Man marked a stunning comeback for Elfman's
emotionally dramatic half, with five to ten minutes of simply
unforgettable magic. For these moments alone, the score can be
classified among the best of 2000.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For Danny Elfman reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.16
(in 87 reviews)
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