, the top grossing film
of the previous year and winner of all the major Academy Awards. A
compelling script tackled the subject of autism in a very mindful but
unusual way. Tom Cruise plays an upstart car dealer of questionable
character who intends to inherit several million dollars from his
estranged father, but he discovers after the man's death that the money
was given to a brother he never knew he had. That long lost sibling is
Dustin Hoffman in one of his award-winning roles, having studied autism
significantly before expertly portraying all the mannerisms of the
condition in his performance. The younger, successful brother takes the
older, frightened one across the country to take part in custody
legalities (so that he can acquire the money), but after exploiting the
Hoffman character's memorization abilities in Las Vegas, he eventually
cares enough for his sibling to shift his focus to the care of the man.
It's a heart-warming tale dependent on a smart script and superb acting
performances, and it was a project blessed early and often by its
studio. One area in which Levinson was unsure how to proceed was the
score. An array of songs was already set to be placed in
, many of which comprising the commercial album release for the
production. But he ended up taking a chance on newcomer Hans Zimmer for
the original score after his wife had heard the composer's ethnic music
for
, a work that Zimmer continues to consider among
his most significant. None of his assignments changed his life as much
as
, however, for the score would lead to a surprising
Oscar nomination and several consecutive years of work on films highly
successful both critically and in worldwide grosses. To this point in
his career, Zimmer had been operating out of London and collaborating
with composer Stanley Myers to learn about a scoring industry he had
always admired. Zimmer was still producing his scores on arrays of
synthesizers at the time, sometimes with acoustic soloists, and pushing
the limits of development in the application of sampled orchestral
sounds to light rock environments.
For
Rain Man, the formula for Zimmer wasn't much
different, teaming with assistant and eventual Media Ventures regular
Nick Glennie-Smith to provide music primarily performed on Zimmer's
Fairlight CMI synthesizer and steel drums. The score also features pan
pipes and female vocals of a gospel tone as the anchors of its two
disparate personalities. More important than the instrumentation,
however, as was often the case for Zimmer at this time, is the sense of
style that the composer brought to the film. An abundance of style is
indeed what has kept this score so popular for so long. When attempting
to capture the essence of
Rain Man, Zimmer made a conscious
effort to keep the score both personable and quirky. "It was a road
movie, and road movies usually have gangly guitars or a bunch of
strings," he recalled much later. "I kept thinking, 'don't be bigger
than the characters. Try to keep it contained.' The Raymond character
[Hoffman] doesn't actually know where he is. The world is so different
to him. He might as well be on Mars. So, why don't we just invent our
own world music for a world that doesn't really exist?" As a result,
Zimmer wrote a score that concentrates on propelling the film's sense of
movement while defying a genre as much as it crosses cultural
boundaries. It moves with a slight hint of the rhythm and keyboarding
that would develop into his reggae style for
Cool Runnings. The
affable combination of soothing keyboarding and percussion would
translate directly into his
True Romance adaptation work and
others. The exotic sound of
Rain Man ranges from the plucked,
oriental tones that later informed
Black Rain and
Beyond
Rangoon to the gorgeous pan pipes that evolved through several
Zimmer scores until reaching their maturation in
The Lion King.
The wild gospel vocal accents for the Las Vegas scenes are best emulated
by portions of
Point of No Return. The varied combination of
synthetic and real percussion was a precursor to
The Power of
One. Some of these sounds actually grew out of
A World Apart,
but as any serious Zimmer collector will know, the majority of his music
from 1989 to 1994 has some connection back to
Rain Man.
The only usually-present element in Zimmer's highly
recognizable music of the period that doesn't have any major role in
this score is the electric guitar, which traces instead (in the
mainstream, at least) to
Black Rain. The attractive aspect of
this score is not only the intriguing combination of sounds for both
lead personalities, but also the simple and pretty demeanor of the main
theme for Hoffman's character. Cruise's more flamboyant persona is
afforded its only real spark of life in the slightly-rock inspired Las
Vegas cue (with early ensemble choral hints as well), but the score
concentrates mostly on the older brother's unusual journey. The rhythms
and progressions in the theme are contemporary enough to cover both
characters, and the only truly odd foreign sound to be heard (in early
cues, naturally) is an Australian didgeridoo effect. While Zimmer's main
theme on pan pipes is best remembered by its accompaniment of the hip,
keyboarded rhythms, the idea is most beautiful when conveyed on its own
or with slight secondary motifs, such as the oriental idea that would
later sneak into
Toys, strangely enough. The first half of the
score often explores soft variations on the main theme with satisfyingly
relaxing results. The latter portions present Zimmer's fledgling
suspense material, with "Smoke Alarm" offering the most challenging
moment in the work. There isn't a tremendous amount of score material in
Rain Man, but Zimmer's contribution certainly deserved more than
just eleven minutes on the original, commercial soundtrack release. The
first of Zimmer's two cues on that product combines some of the more
compelling and soft, thematic portions from the first half of the film.
The second cue merges the snazzy, roaring Las Vegas cue (in a different
mix from what was heard in the film) with a return to the lovely theme
for the closing credits. For any true fan of either
Rain Man or
Zimmer's career, however, there are too many variations on the main
theme left off that ubiquitous product. Several bootlegs sprouted up in
the late 1990's, eventually supplanted by one leaking of the recording
sessions that reached over 48 minutes in length. This collection of cues
isn't particularly well edited and is padded by some alternate takes,
recordings of the pan pipes or vocal tracks alone, or dialogue (with
profanity; can you imagine!) between Zimmer and Glennie-Smith in the
studio.
Muffled sound quality remained a major issue throughout
the history of the score on its bootleg arrangements. In late 2010,
enthusiasts of the composer rejoiced in the news that
Rain Man
was to be legitimately released by Perseverance Records in a limited
2,000-copy pressing. That product contained the complete score minus
some of the aforementioned padding on the bootlegs. Despite producer
Robin Esterhammer's best efforts, however, this album likewise suffered
from the lack of acceptable source tapes. Even after some cleaning of
the analog source (which is recognized as being "really crappy" right on
the packaging), the presentation sounds only slightly superior to that
of the bootlegs, with distortion associated with bloated gain levels a
problem throughout. Audiophiles were appropriately horrified, and the
album existed as a source of almost humorous, widespread ridicule in
film music forums for years. It was a bit odd, in fact, to figure that
the assembly of the Perseverance album could have benefited the most by
simply using the existing Capitol CD as the best available source for
parts of its own product. Alas, the search for better master elements
ensued, and Notefornote Music finally found superior sources at MGM and
consolidated the shorter tracks into an optimum presentation in 2018
that lost the two bonus tracks of soloist recordings from the previous
album (the wild pan pipes, vocals, and percussion that were side
curiosities at best) but did reconstruct the original two Capitol CD
suites. Finally, the sound quality on this product is comparatively
immaculate, with Zimmer's somewhat wet environment preserved in the
score's ethereal worldly moments. Unfortunately, the label only pressed
a head-scratching 1,000 copies of the album, failing to meet lingering
demand and selling out within a few weeks (except for a large quantity
suspiciously sold by Amazon.com at higher prices thereafter). If you
missed the 2018 release, don't bother with the 2010 Perseverance
alternative as a fallback. Instead, another solution to
Rain Man
is to collect the majority of Zimmer's other early works as mentioned in
this review; that way, you'll hear nearly every aspect of this important
score in his career emulated or developed into arguably superior
variations. Regardless, the spirited and optimistic main theme from
Rain Man will always be a fan favorite, and the score earns a
fourth star for sentimental reasons alone. There is genuine intimacy and
a loving heart in this score that remains sadly absent from Zimmer's
later years of ensemble mentality at Remote Control Productions.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For Hans Zimmer reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.94
(in 96 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 2.97
(in 275,255 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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