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| Powell |
I Am Sam: (John Powell) Designed to be a tearjerker
guided by its superb acting performances and tackling of a difficult
topic, 2001's
I Am Sam is a study of how a mentally disabled man
manages an unexpected role as father. Played by Sean Penn to high
acclaim, this man fathers a child with a homeless woman and must rely
upon his supportive group of friends to help raise the girl. When the
government comes to remove the girl and place her in a foster home at
the age of seven years old, the girl does everything she can to help her
foster parents and father come together to raise her. Along the journey,
an attorney played equally well by Michelle Pfeiffer represents the man
but ultimately learns more from him about her life than she anticipated.
Despite all the opportunities for an unhappy ending,
I Am Sam
attempts to leave you with tears of joy, and while critics weren't
buying it at all, audiences still made the movie a success story.
Integral with the storyline are a variety of songs by The Beatles, the
lyrics of which inform several basic plot points. The filmmakers
initially wanted to sprinkle the original recordings by The Beatles into
the movie but were unable to do so because of licensing restrictions.
They instead hired a variety of well-known artists to provide covers of
them instead, and sixteen such songs graced the popular soundtrack. Most
of the renditions are rather low-key and intimate, but they range
significantly in performance inflection. Separate and unrelated to these
song placements is John Powell's original score for the movie, which
itself espouses the same efficiently minimalistic presence for the
concept. Powell was just emerging as a mainstream drama and comedy
composer apart from the Hans Zimmer machine by this point, and many of
his projects of this period were eclectic or quirky in ways not always
palatable. Almost every moment of his work for
I Am Sam is easily
digestible, the environment he creates for the movie consistently
affable and lightly propulsive, the warmth of his sparse but adequate
ensemble almost never stepping aside to the realm of dissonance. For
some listeners, the atmospheres he explores here may be inevitably
boring, but the score maintains its very even and subtle simmer for a
specific purpose and largely succeeds at its task.
Powell creates his friendly ambience for
I Am
Sam on the back of acoustic guitar, ukulele, and solo cello,
sprinkling in a variety of percussive elements and keyboarding at times.
A few accents from winds, piano, clapping sounds, and other contributors
exist as well, and by the end of the tale, the composer completes the
picture with a full string ensemble to supply a little more emotional
catharsis. Generally, though, it's the guitars and bass that really
define this score's character, a cue like "Buying Shoes" perfectly
embodying its spirit. Powell's structures in the work are always in
motion and often prickly in their staccato precision, the layers of
instrumental activity sometimes suggesting the slightly off-kilter way
the main character views his surroundings. The shifting tempos of
"Starbucks & Hospital" are a direct representation of these
unpredictable movements but not necessarily in a negative way. The
downside of Powell's approach is a lack of significant thematic
narrative to the work, his ideas never congealing at the end when the
fuller ensemble performances arrive. Ironically, a rap song released by
Nas in 2008 called "Queens Get the Money" credits its instrumental line
to the "theme" from
I Am Sam by John Powell, but the minor third
alternations heard in that song don't actually connect explicitly to
anything in the score. Instead, Powell uses a similar, simplistic
alternation of notes heard with the most heart in "Reading Together" and
later develops a more cohesive idea for the father and daughter
relationship on screen. That idea is carried by the solo cello in "Sam
Visits Lucy" and "Lucy Runs and Sam Loses," though many listeners may
miss it. More interesting is the composer's employment of sound effects
throughout the score, starting with the unknown room noise effects in
"Starbucks & Hospital." The vintage phone-related effects used in "Rita"
for Pfeiffer's character are intriguing but not necessarily enjoyable.
More creative is the wild variety of struck metallic percussion in
"Making Coffee" that sounds like a chaotic kitchen process underway.
Because so many of the important moments in the film are graced with The
Beatles songs, Powell's score doesn't have much of a chance to wrap up
the narrative, and the album reflects that diminished culmination
despite some thematic closure in "On the Stairs." Overall,
I Am
Sam is an effective lesser drama score with embraceable tones and
occasional splashes of creativity, but remember to temper your
expectations.
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| Bias Check: |
For John Powell reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.28
(in 50 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.16
(in 52,492 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert includes a list of performers but no extra information about the score or film.
