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| Zimmer |
Green Card: (Hans Zimmer) Would you arrange a
marriage of convenience with a foreigner you don't know or even like
simply to qualify for your ideal apartment? That's the silly premise of
the cross-cultural 1990 romance flick
Green Card, writer and
director Peter Weir's attempt to lure audiences with funny interactions
between Gerard Depardieu and Andie MacDowell. When MacDowell's
plant-loving character seeks to rent a New York apartment (with a
greenhouse) available only to married couples, a common friend acquaints
her with a French immigrant in need of a green card to stay in America.
The two marry, accomplish their goals, and go their separate ways. When
immigration officials start an investigation into their marriage,
however, the leads are forced to get to know one another in the final
reel despite their unsuccessful attempts at deception, and the film went
on to moderate success that yielded a couple of Golden Globes and
screenplay nominations across the board for Weir. Interestingly, it was
the second consecutive Globe-winning comedy film scored by Hans Zimmer
(
Driving Miss Daisy was the winner the previous year), though
this assignment, as any involving Weir typically is, presented unique
challenges for the emerging composer. The first aspect of
Green
Card that required some extra coordination for Zimmer was the
aspiring compositional side of the Depardieu character, with the famous
French actor either shown playing Zimmer's original music on a piano or
humming the score's primary theme while going about his business on
screen. The second challenge for Zimmer was writing a score that not
only addresses the crossing of cultural boundaries in a contemporary
urban environment, but also functions in between several placements of
high profile new age pieces by Enya (whose impact on soundtracks was
felt heavily after her mainstream debut). Some of the new age elements
in Zimmer's lighter writing at the time, from wet keyboarding to
soothingly simple progressions for synthesizers, were comparable in tone
to Enya's work, most evident in
Toys, another score that had to
deal with obvious Enya placement. Instead of tackling
Green Card
with the kind of airy orchestral romanticism that Georges Delerue might
have brought to such a film, he played purely to the contemporary side
of the film, emulating, as he so often did at the time (and usually by
implicit request), the affable rhythmic personality of
Rain Man's
upbeat half. The result is an undemanding, functional score that is both
easy to enjoy and features at least one notable highlight.
Because of the involvement of so many non-Zimmer pieces
in
Green Card, adding Mozart and The Beach Boys (among others) to
the Enya songs, the original score doesn't really have much time to
develop its themes with great consistency. That said, Zimmer does follow
three distinct threads in his score that give it a cohesive feeling. The
first is the score's primary theme of flowing optimism, heard in
"Restless Elephants," "Cafe Afrika," and "Pour Bronte." This keyboarded
idea is about as standard to Zimmer's contemporary writing of the era as
it can be, even down to familiar drum pads, synthesized samples in the
rhythms, and progressions straight from
Rain Man. It doesn't
overflow with the same redemptive enthusiasm that the arguably more
appealing theme for
Point of No Return conveys in its most
extroverted performances. In "Cafe Afrika," the theme is aided by an
exotic woodwind effect that balances the sometimes dated keyboarding,
and these soft flute tones are a precursor to
The Lion King. The
second theme is termed "Instinct" by Zimmer and exists twice on the
album for
Green Card. The first of these two cues, opening the
score portion of that product, is the overall highlight of the
composition (especially for those tired of Zimmer's usual romance
techniques of the era). With almost an East Indian personality in its
progressions, this outwardly foreign-sounding piece could be considered
a sibling to
Beyond Rangoon in its deep bass pulsing, slapping
percussion, intoxicating female vocals, and compelling high woodwind
solos. Despite feeling a bit out of place in the context of the
surrounding music, "Instinct" is the necessary cue for Zimmer collectors
to glean from
Green Card. The third side of the score consists of
the piano solos representative of Depardieu's character, gracing "9am
Central Park" alone and backed by tasteful string effects in "Asking
You." The only detractions from the score are the low key rumblings of
Zimmer's looped percussion and meandering keyboarding in "Moonlight" and
"Silence," the former the most dated cue in the presentation. In sum,
only about half an hour of the composer's original music exists on the
album, uncharacteristically in relatively short tracks. The best
material is concentrated at the start of that product. The absence of
the Enya songs is both a benefit and a drawback; it would have been nice
(though too expensive) to hear their inclusion, but without them, the
hoards of people who bought the album assuming they would be there have
made
Green Card an easy find on the used market. Anyone familiar
with and friendly to Zimmer's early light rock and new age themes of
likable rhythms will find several cues of solid material to enjoy.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
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| Bias Check: |
For Hans Zimmer reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.84
(in 121 reviews)
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(in 298,172 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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