| CLOSE WINDOW |
|
FILMTRACKS.COM
PRINTER-FRIENDLY VIEW 
Review of I Am Sam (John Powell)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you desire a friendly and lightly propulsive
mood-setter with a slightly quirky personality, John Powell exercising
efficiency in his minimalism beyond all else.
Avoid it... if plucky guitar and ukulele music with occasional sound effects and minimal thematic development leaves you without any emotional foothold for this dramatic concept.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
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. ***
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 40:46
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert includes a list of performers but no extra information about the score or film.
Copyright ©
2024, Filmtracks Publications. All rights reserved.
The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from I Am Sam are Copyright © 2001, Varèse Sarabande and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 5/5/24 (and not updated significantly since). |
