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| Elfman |
A Simple Plan: (Danny Elfman) In director Sam
Raimi's journey to the mainstream,
A Simple Plan was an important
critical success. The almost universally praised 1998 film was a
chilling, methodical exercise in character development. Scott Smith's
adaptation of his best-selling novel was guided to the screen with a
little indirect assistance from accomplished names like John Boorman and
the Coen Brothers, and the film's uncanny resemblance to the atmosphere
of
Fargo is no coincidence. In the story, four relatives and
friends with normal lifestyles in America's Midwest discover an
abandoned, crashed plane with millions of dollars on board. Their
different ideas on what to do with the money (and their seemingly
simplistic plan that eventually unravels) leads to off-kilter humor,
cold-hearted betrayal and, ultimately, bloodshed. The film's frigid
setting is its most intriguing characteristic, and it is this bleak
environment that composer Danny Elfman was attempting to accentuate with
his score.
A Simple Plan is one of many effective collaborations
between Elfman and Raimi, though it's also one of the least accessible
to the composer's more casual fans. This work was among many in the
middle to late 1990's that reaffirmed the composer's departure from the
large-scale orchestral majesty of his earlier output. In the list of
Elfman's more minimalistic efforts,
A Simple Plan is perhaps the
most sparsely rendered and difficult to enjoy in a traditional sense.
Elfman used the words "unique," "tricky," "fun," "different," and "very,
very simple" when describing this score. Fans of the composer are
correct in stating that
A Simple Plan is anything but simple when
placed in context with the film's equally non-simple plot. On album, the
score is significantly more difficult to grasp, proving that rather
being revolutionary, it is simply different.
To the surprise of both some of his regular co-workers
and fans, Elfman dropped the brass and percussion sections of the
orchestra from his ensemble for
A Simple Plan and replaced them
with a bloated woodwind section that included nine alto and bass flutes.
In an even more effective move, he re-tuned a few pianos and banjos so
that they constantly sound half a tone off, a purposeful choice to aid
the sense of disenchantment in the film. An electric bass defines the
low registers (as was common for the composer during that era) and often
contributes to the score's slow and deliberate rhythmic monotony. The
electric bass' pacing is the music's closest connection to
A Civil
Action, which is often argued both favorably and unfavorably in
comparison to
A Simple Plan. Distant violins perform simple
background accompaniment for the flutes, banjos, pianos, and a variety
of unusual instruments that sound remarkably similar in parts to Thomas
Newman's like-minded experiments at the time. Elfman himself performs
the majority of these sounds, most of which are merely the results of
his original tinkering with, as he states, "odd string struck sounds,
glass sounds, and harmonic sounds" that he collects for such
applications. Thematically, the score is understated, introducing both
of its themes in "Main Title." The primary identity of the score comes
first, and it is this quirky, fragmented motif that perfectly matches
the instruments that perform it. Its progressions are far from obvious,
leaving the more sensitive secondary theme later in the cue as the
score's only really memorable tune. Heard at about 3:00 into "Main
Title" and maturing in "Death," this harmonic idea is a source of tender
comfort in an otherwise unforgiving musical landscape. Also like
Newman's unconventional work of the same era, Elfman allows the
instrumentation to overshadow the structures its performs, leaving a
general impression rather than a clear memory.
As mentioned before, the score's effectiveness in the
film doesn't translate to its album, where its effect is genuinely
disturbing. The most similar listening experience in Elfman's career to
that date was likely
Dolores Claiborne, a score that continues to
serve as a true test for the hardiness of Elfman collectors.
A Simple
Plan could serve the same purpose, for it is terribly alienating and
distant, with very subtle thematic exploration and a lack of much truly
rewarding material. Its heart is cold and the skewed instrumentation
causes it to be a necessarily unpleasant listening experience. The score
does have one solid bright spot, as well as one major irritation. The
somber atmosphere breaks into a sweat during the degeneration into sheer
noise and sound effects of "Tracks in the Snow." Immediately following,
however, is the quite attractive 5-minute "Death" cue that offers the
secondary theme on melancholy flute, piano, and strings with a faint
romantic spirit that appeals as a ghostly interpretation of John Barry's
typical style. Overall, the score for
A Simple Plan is difficult
to appreciate or enjoy without knowledge of the film with which to
correlate the two. It is an extremely original and lonely piece of
music, and surely not an album that will cheer you up. In this work,
Elfman's creativity ironically flourished to the smallest and simplest
level of his career, leaving some fans yearning for even the flair of
the mambo from
Flubber. Its complexity in technicality, aided by a
very crisp recording quality, makes the score a good one for study. But
for casual fans, it'll be too disheartening. The Compass III release
(one of the short-lived label's first) doesn't include some key cues
from the film in its 31+ minutes of score, however it does provide three
source songs from the film. From this point, Elfman would go on to
experiment with xylophones, marimbas, thumb pianos, African drums, and
other creative elements in
Instinct, another score that has
fallen into obscurity in the composer's career.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
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| Bias Check: |
For Danny Elfman reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.16
(in 90 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.27
(in 154,056 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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