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Review by John Mullin, Introduction and Page designed by Ryan Keaveney
I've received a few emails from visitors asking why I'd let this quasi-negative review of PROOF OF LIFE go up on my site. The answer is really simple - the writer John Mullin is a friend who has contributed many reviews in the past to MFADP (and will hopefully continue to do so!). This marks the first time he's been left a bit cold by a Elfman score album (his prior reviews include A SIMPLE PLAN, A CIVIL ACTION and SLEEPY HOLLOW). I respect his opinion - even if it does differ from my own (you can read my review here at Cinemusic Online). John's review will remain on this site for as long as MFADP exists. This is a fan-site after all, and John is a fan. It's important to remember that - thanks!
- Ryan Keaveney
There was a movement in the mid 90's, I'm not sure who started it, in which film music gradually began to move away from more thematic and motif oriented material and into styles more dissonant, harsh, and otherwise less pleasant to listen to. While this new wave has yielded some interesting results in the way of film scores that are sometimes built around electronic ambiance and largely atonal instruments, I've gotta say that I've found it somewhat disappointing over the years to hear some of the old masters, who previously showed such gifts for melody and counterpoint, evolve to the stage where texture and atmosphere replace thematic richness and musical coherency. Of them all, none has been more heart-breaking than the slow transformation of Danny Elfman.
Elfman's new soundtrack, PROOF OF LIFE, is the latest in a string of less-than-satisfying outings for the composer. The picture is a kidnapping drama directed by Taylor Hackford, who previously worked with Elfman on DOLORES CLAIBORNE, but don't go in expecting the same kind of thematic layering that their previous collaboration resulted in. This score, like last year's INSTINCT, is largely percussion-based, but with occasional quiet moments that are solely orchestral. The music has a chip on its shoulder: it's angry and brutal and in addition to utilizing Elfman's familiar electronic pallet, introduces new elements like the samples of children screaming that can be prominently heard in the main title. The score's closest relatives could be the "Job Found" piece from MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE and "The Descent" from EXTREME MEASURES. There's a nice guitar flavoring that sort of represents the island (and Meg Ryan), and a guttural, alto-flute that sounds very "cold" and is used to represent the guerrillas and David Morse's captivity. That said, there really isn't a lot of thematic material to speak of, and for me at least, that's where this album comes up short.
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VARESE SARABANDE 302 066 208 2
Music Composed by Danny Elfman
Album Produced by Danny Elfman
and Ellen Segal
Executive Producer: Robert Townson
Supervising Orchestrator: Steve Bartek
Orchestrations by Edgardo Simone
and Mark McKenzie
Additional Orchestrations by David Slonaker
and Marc Mann
Orchestra Conducted by Peter Anthony
Score Recorded and Mixed by Dennis Sands
Music Editor: Ellen Segal
Score Recorded & Mixed at the Eastwood Scoring Stage at Warner Bros. Studio Facilities.
1. Main Title (5'54)
2. The Hostage Game (3'04)
3. Plane to Catch (1'18)
4. Alice Breaks Down (2'12)
5. Bullet In The Head (2'23)
6. The Miscarriage (2'12)
7. Escape (3'20)
8. The Rescue (3'37)
9. The Finale (6'00)
Running Time: 30'08
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That's not to say that this score is without themes: it certainly does have them. As is Elfman's custom these days, however, they're hidden in much more clever ways than they ever were before. In the past, we'd get a main title that offered bold statements of the "A" and "B" themes, so when they came up in the body of the score, we knew what they were right away and where they were going. The main titles of late still introduce the primary themes, but they do so in the midst of a lot of other chaos and congestion. Very rarely do they state the theme in overt ways (SLEEPY HOLLOW notwithstanding), but if one listens closely, what is to become the main theme is often lurking somewhere therein.
The multipurpose PROOF OF LIFE theme is introduced right at the beginning of the "Main Titles," and comes back frequently throughout the rest of the score. It's not one of those themes, however, that sticks in your memory for too long, and it wasn't until my third of fourth time through the album that I could easily recognize variations of it when they began to play. Another theme is the powerful and longing "hope" theme that plays whenever David Morse (the kidnapped guy) thinks of his Meg Ryan (his wife) and vice versa. Usually played on low synths or strings, it gets bold statements at the beginning of "Miscarriage" and "The Finale." Aside from those two, the only strong, reoccurring motif seems to be a sad piano line representing the unrequited love between Ryan and Russell Crowe. It is only heard twice on this album; once in the second half of "The Miscarriage" and again in the middle of "The Finale."
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With the exception of that last one, the themes are mostly hidden under layers and layers of percussive texture, and the question that all this raises for me is whether or not they're worth the trouble of hunting down and identifying in the first place. For most people, I suspect the answer will be no. The album offers some fun texture, but on the whole I'd have to say that this is the first Danny Elfman soundtrack in many years about which I really can't think of anything particularly meaningful to say. The action music is exciting, I guess, but as a listener, I kind of want something with a little more substance to hang my hat on. As with recent scores like A CIVIL ACTION and INSTINCT, it never quite delivers something completely satisfying. It's a little disheartening that something like this gets a full 30-minute release while his thematically rich score to THE FAMILY MAN has to settle for a brief (but magical) six minutes at the end of a sub-standard song compilation.
There are two tracks worth mentioning on the PROOF OF LIFE soundtrack; the first one and the last one. "Main Title" starts off in a way that's very promising, with a lot of angry percussion and pulsing rhythms. It's kind of like certain passages from MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE on steroids, and it would seemingly be a good omen for the rest of the soundtrack. Sadly, however, that does not turn out to be the case and the "middle" part of the album tends to feel more like filler than anything. It's not until the final track, "The Finale," that things start to get interesting again. In it, bold statements of the score's two themes are heard, along with the introduction of some little shreds of music that, had they been introduced earlier and more prominently, might have given the picture's conclusion the greater payoff that it so desperately needed. Unfortunately, however, the score, like the movie and sometimes the characters in it, falls into the category of delivering too little, too late.
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