Filmtracks: Beetlejuice (Danny Elfman)


Elfman

Beetlejuice: (Danny Elfman) It's difficult to say if filmmaker Tim Burton will ever be able to capture the magic of Beetlejuice in another project, though he has certainly tried through the years. Not only does Beetlejuice continue to define the director's quirky sensibilities, but it also benefits from the honeymoon experience, being the public's first major glimpse at his morbidly comic style. It also maintains fascination in that it contained a simply marvelous cast of relative unknowns at the time, most of whom would not only flourish in careers of their own, but continue to be a part of Burton's normal cast ensemble in many subsequent projects. The youth and vitality of both the cast and crew exudes its enthusiasm for fantasy in every aspect of the film, including Danny Elfman's score. Despite the Oingo Boingo lead's previous activities for the realm of Pee Wee and other wacky projects, Beetlejuice was his introduction to mainstream audiences as well, establishing an irresistible knack for creativity that would astonish listeners and genuinely excite film music fans. Some veteran film score collectors were actually quite horrified by Elfman's ultra-dynamic, explosive sound, rejecting him as an untrained freak from the world of rock. The composer's classic score for Batman the following year would squash all such concerns, though while Elfman would continue exploring the deeply troubled gothic sounds that would culminate in the top notch scores for Edward Scissorhands in 1991 and Sommersby in 1993, fans would look back at Beetlejuice as a lovable bridge between Elfman's earliest and zaniest orchestral styles and the morbidly brooding music to follow. The plot of Beetlejuice was a perfect mould for this transition, offering the death of a young couple at the outset and forcing them to haunt their own new home to expunge the next owners. Together with the suicidal daughter of those owners, Elfman has plenty of mysterious tragedy to muster in Beetlejuice. More than countering that side of the score is the outright carnival atmosphere created by Michael Keaton's title character. A "fixer" for the dead, Betelgeuse harasses both the dead couple and those who moved into their home with horrific pranks, requiring an extremely frenetic and diverse score to match his personality.

The fact that Elfman met all these demands of the script with musical ideas so perfectly matched to Burton's concepts should be no surprise. More interesting is how unique the Beetlejuice score still sounds two decades later, and while Elfman has flirted with some parody and outright comedy in the years since his scoring career transcended the A-list, he's never been able to resurrect the same outlandish style. To describe the score in a technical sense is doing a disservice to its ambient qualities; it really is a difficult score to describe with words because any such attempt to brush past so many different ideas would neglect the intangibles that draw them together. No rhythm is safe with Elfman, who utilizes tangos, marches, waltzes, and even Caribbean calypso movements in Beetlejuice. His thematic development is also remarkably complex, with two distinct ideas created for Betelgeuse himself, along with themes for Lydia (Winona Ryder), the Deetze couple (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis), and several minor characters. Even a nasty sand worm in the world of the undead receives its own recurring motif. No instrument is safe with Elfman either, who compensates for a smaller ensemble by pulling every last bit of effort from each performer. The piano is used in a somewhat perverse fashion, taking the concept of the instrument's innocent role as representing family values and giving it an almost demonic alternative. A typical orchestral ensemble, though sparse, is joined by a lively percussion section, an array of synthesizers, and vocal effects that range from solo boy to full adult ensemble (with occasional synthetic voices for spooky effect). Specialty instruments, possibly synthetic, include pipe organ, harpsichord, pan pipes, and a variety of others. Each section of the orchestra is led by unusual suspects, including tuba for brass and viola for strings. Integral to the film as well is Harry Belafonte, whose classic "Day-O" song is hilariously used during a dinner party possession scene and "Jump in Line" highlights the finale of the film. How Burton and Elfman decided upon "Day-O" is beyond all reason, for its sound and lyrics have absolutely nothing to do with the film's plot. But it works wonders, and Elfman wisely incorporates a stanza of "Day-O" into the opening bars of his "Main Titles."

Most casual viewers of Beetlejuice will either remember the Belafonte songs (the film did help popularize him with the younger generation to such an extent that pieces of "Day-O" are used in stadiums across the world today to rouse crowds) or Elfman's wild title theme, heard in full during the opening and closing credits, with fragments sprinkled throughout. Representing Betelgeuse at his most wickedly powerful, this theme is both playful and sinister, utilizing a catchy, octave-repeating piano motif in its bass before building to a cymbal-pounding march that heavily resembles Russian classicism. The waltzes that emanate from this character theme are far more jaunty than they would be in the subsequent Batman, and Elfman treats the more seductively sick side of Betelgeuse with a perverse viola theme centered heavily in the first half of the score. In "Beetle-Snake" and "Showtime!," Elfman's verbose ideas for Betelgeuse reach an almost horrific level of activity, taking the carnival atmosphere to heart while hindering the listenability of the score on album. The album does, however, showcase the less obvious haunts of the score. The softer variants of the "Travel Music" for the dead couple, often merging with the theme for Lydia, create some of the unsuspected highlights. The solo vocals, including those heard in "The Book!" and "Lydia Discovers," whether real or synthesized, touch upon the classic gloom and doom of Elfman's gothic side. The outright highlight of both the score in film and on album is "The Incantation," a piece that opens with a curiously enticing duet for piano and drums before erupting into a pipe organ crescendo of harmonic resonance for the dead couple's forced resurrection. The use of the harp and high synth choir in this cue, both so innocent in tone, are a perfect balance for the menacing organ and bass drums that dominate. There's even a hint of Jerry Goldsmith's "Blaster Beam" sound effect in its upper ranges at times during "The Incantation." Other crescendos of similar style exist in Beetlejuice, but none with the same sustained power. As any listener will quickly notice, Elfman's music jumps around in style as often as the film requires, creating a somewhat disjointed listening experience outside of the consistently unpredictable instrumental employment that Elfman uses as the glue for the score.


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Together, these individual parts of Beetlejuice create a whole that is nearly indescribable in its effectiveness. Parts of it are pure magic, while others are hideously unlistenable. The common denominator, however, is the fact that a better score could not be written for the story. For Elfman fans, while the composer's career has strayed far from this outrageously haphazard creativity, the basic elements that encompass his later intelligent and often surprising constructs find many of their roots in Beetlejuice. As a listening experience on album, the score fails to achieve top marks because of two factors: first, it's not only disjointed but it's also short, amounting to under thirty minutes in running time. All of the major cues are present and they're mostly in film order (the second Belafonte song is switched with the "End Credits"). The version of the "Main Titles" on album is different from what was heard in the film. There is lingering dissatisfaction with the sound quality as well. The piano is mixed heavily at the forefront, as it needs to be, but other parts of the score are greatly hindered by an extremely dry and flat recording. This uninspiring ambience betrays some of Elfman's synthesized effects, especially the ghost sounds in the opening titles. Ironically, the best sound of the entire album exists in its opening thirty seconds, during which Elfman dubs an echoing mix of a male choir performing "Daylight come and me wanna go home" before the score's primary rhythm gets started. The Belafonte songs feature, in many ways, a more appropriate, live mix than most of the score. While it could be argued that the intimate recording plays well to the character action of the film, it's hard to imagine that Beetlejuice would have been any weaker if a larger ensemble and wetter mix had further enhanced the fantasy elements of the film. Overall, though, Beetlejuice remains a devilishly enjoyable listening experience for fans of the film. Coming when it did for Elfman, Beetlejuice has been affectionately referred to as the "Handbook for the Recently Discovered Composer." If you're neither enthusiastic about his career nor Burton's films, then this score, despite its intelligence, could be extremely irritating. Elfman's music would be adapted a few years later for the animated television series based on the same concept. ****

Bias Check:

For Danny Elfman reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.14 (in 42 reviews)
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