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PRINTER-FRIENDLY VIEW 
Review of Regarding Henry (Georges Delerue/Hans Zimmer)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you never tire of dozing off to Georges Delerue's
restrained but beautiful orchestral lyricism or Hans Zimmer's
predictably innocuous, harmoniously consistent light jazz and drama
style of the early 1990's.
Avoid it... on the Zimmer album if the composer's intriguingly unique application of vocals, erhu-like violin, muted trumpet, and acoustic double bass may threaten the otherwise conservatively smooth atmosphere of its synthetic, contemporary tone for you.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Regarding Henry: (Georges Delerue/Hans Zimmer) Not
all of writer, director, and producer J.J. Abrams' concepts have been
successes. In fact, early in his career, he wrote scripts that were
often pounded by critics, and one of his first tastes of that reaction
came when his second feature film story was teamed with director Mike
Nichols. The 1991 drama Regarding Henry was mostly advertised as
an exhibit of actor Harrison Ford's ability to charm audiences in less
heroic circumstances. He plays a mean, unethical, cutthroat New York
lawyer with a dysfunctional family but a highly respected career
defending large clients. He is shot in the head and chest while seeking
cigarettes at a convenience store and recovers without a memory or
speaking ability. Through the laborious process of his rehabilitation,
he is reintroduced to his family and discovers, not surprisingly, that
he doesn't like his former self. His medical disaster ultimately saves
his most meaningful relationships and causes him to turn against his own
law firm. It was revealed by critics at the time that Regarding
Henry was a contrived attempt by the director to revive past glory
from a similar journey of self-discovery, and other than an early
leading role for actress Annette Bening, not much came of it. Screenings
for the movie had gone poorly enough to cause the rejection of the
film's original score by French romance master Georges Delerue, who had
enjoyed three successful collaborations with Nichols previously.
Delerue, not surprisingly, had written a lovely score for strings,
woodwinds, and a tasteful handful of plucked accompaniment meant to
humanize Ford's character and infuse a sense of warmth and intimacy into
the relationships in the story. His music was led by a lyrical violin
theme that meanders with classical grace in many important cues,
straying into solo woodwinds as per the norm for the composer. Only in
"Back to Life" does Delerue extend into covertly grandiose volumes. His
music for the movie has distinctly European sensibilities in its embrace
of the concept, and when test audiences reacted poorly to Delerue's
rather sappy style (which, to the studio's defense, did strike up its
romantic tone immediately and persistently rather than slowly evolve as
does the main character), Nichols apologized to him with humiliation
upon the notice of rejection and vowed to work again with Delerue. The
composer died within a year of completing Regarding Henry,
however, silencing the industry's most reliable provider of overflowing
melodic beauty.
This film was not the first instance during the composer's final ten years in which his music was rejected from a major American picture. He was far more distraught with his removal from Something Wicked This Way Comes in 1983, however, accepting the loss of Regarding Henry with greater ease. These two rejected works (actually, about half of each) were eventually released together by Universal France on one CD in 2011, and the 33-minute Regarding Henry portion features sound quality far better than that of the older work. In both cases, Delerue was supplanted by much younger composers on the verge of finding their strides in American cinema, and these replacement scores were both above average in quality. Whereas James Horner finished the scoring duties for the 1983 film, Regarding Henry became one of many character stories for composer Hans Zimmer, who was in the midst of a period in his career when light dramas and romantic comedies were the norm. He was a dependable source of affable, contemporary music at a low cost, having proven his techniques with the mainstream upon receiving an early Oscar nomination for that sound. In terms of instrumentation and spirit, many of Zimmer's scores for these assignments from 1989 to 1993 utilize extremely similar ideas that became the composer's easily identifiable trademarks. The success of any one of these scores individually usually depended upon the composer's ability to insert some kind of unique personality into each score. For Regarding Henry, he begins with the same one-man ensemble of keyboards and samples, continuing to emulate organic instruments with remarkably satisfying results. But on top of these conservatively safe choices (and thematic progressions that unquestionably share traits with other optimistic Zimmer scores of the era), the composer layers a small collection of important acoustic instruments and unconventional vocals into the mix. These special touches allow an enthusiast of Zimmer's older, contemporary style of writing to appreciate this music while digesting some satisfyingly distinguishing characteristics by which to identify it. Whereas Delerue had tackled the story of rebirth with an overwhelming sense of optimistic (and, in a few places, heroic) progress, Zimmer's approach was far more ordinary to filmmaker expectations at the time. The result of his efforts for Regarding Henry is, as was typical for Zimmer in this kind of role on other projects, a completely innocuous and pleasant listening experience with a marginally adequate dose of style far lighter on its feet than Delerue's beautiful but broadly antiquated sound. The rhythmic swing of Zimmer's score is slightly jazzy for the urban atmosphere and employs the soft keyboarding that once defined pop song accompaniment. The composer's themes are somewhat generic amongst his concurrent output, though a slightly melancholy sense does inhabit their melodramatic structures. The way these themes are fleshed out in the score's highlights, however, provides nothing less than another exuberant representation of rebirth. Offered in succession in "Walkin' Talkin' Man," these ideas illuminate most of the instrumental soloists as well. The most memorable is the distinctive voice of Bobby "Don't Worry, Be Happy" McFerrin, whose puffing and sighing performances were seemingly sampled by Zimmer and dubbed in several different variations of pitch to actually replace the need for metallic percussion to set a rhythm. These intriguing vocalizations, which only really lengthen out into melodic accompaniment in that opening track, are so interesting in their tone in some places that they may be distracting from Zimmer's otherwise standard keyboarding. Conventional light percussion pushes a few cues along in the middle passages. An acoustic double bass lends much of the jazzy appeal to the score, sometimes meandering about beneath the keyboarding with freedom. Trumpet and violin soloists accentuate the almost otherworldly nature of some of the ethereal keyboarded, orchestral samples. The trumpet's muted tone offers a noir-like feeling of mystery while the violin has been processed in such a way as to sound like an erhu, an enchanting contributor to several cues. At times, the processing of certain elements makes the soloists eerily vague, as in the ghostly operatic voice in the middle sections of "Henry vs. Henry" and "Gotta Get Me Some of That." Zimmer does ground these sounds with his usual sampled woodwinds, from the crowd-pleasing faux clarinet from Driving Miss Daisy to the quasi-exotic flutes from Green Card and beyond. These performances are assembled into nearly constantly harmonic statements of the score's themes from start to end, yielding a very consistent listening experience on album. Nothing in Zimmer's work for Regarding Henry is earth-shattering, but you can add it to the wealth of easy listening of the least intrusive nature that the composer was accustomed to writing back then. The rare, score-only album for his music does not contain Sting and The Police's song "Walking on the Moon" from the picture. That may a good thing, because you could put this relatively short score on repeat and doze off to a better place for a few hours. The same could be said of Delerue's score, though expect the Frenchman's take on the concept to carry infinitely more weight while achieving the same result.
TRACK LISTINGS:
1991 Capitol Album:
Total Time: 37:33
2011 Universal Album: Total Time: 65:23
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert of the 1991 Capitol album includes no extra information
about the score or film. That of the 2011 Universal product includes detailed
information about the circumstances of the rejection of both of the scores
included, presented in French and English. Sufficient information about the
crews on the latter product (for the recording and the album) is lacking.
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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 Regarding Henry are Copyright © 1991, 2011, Capitol/EMI Records, Universal Music (France) and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 3/22/10 and last updated 12/23/11. |
