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Review of The Circle (Danny Elfman)

FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:

Buy it... if you want to be gaslighted into believing that retro synthetics are the brainwashing tool of tomorrow's surveillance state, Danny Elfman approaching the techno-thriller from a very unconventional viewpoint.

Avoid it... if you know that the best suspense scores involving future technology are driven by characters, a concept which, for some reason, Elfman completely ignored in his development of themes and style for this work.

FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:

The Circle: (Danny Elfman) Anyone who has been tempted to use a rifle to shoot down a random drone hovering over their property will want to purchase crates of ammunition after watching the 2017 movie, The Circle. Based on the 2013 novel of the same name, the film explores issues of corporatocracy and privacy as they relate to social media companies exposing literally every little detail of our lives for the supposed benefit of society as a whole. The thought process of the corporate villains in The Circle not only postulates that they can document and share every moment of a person's life but also run all essential government services. Tom Hanks plays the inspirational, charismatic, and terrifying leader of the company, called "The Circle," while Emma Watson starts as a low-level employee who eventually works her way up to stardom within the venture. Significant differences between the book and film doomed the latter, much of the humor and the hard, unlikable edge to the supposed heroine lost in the adaptation. Regardless, the concept assumes technology that won't exist because of physics and privacy laws, so the entire exercise is moot outside of the character aspect, and even that is rather limp. The star power of The Circle made it a financial success, but both critics and audiences regarded it extremely poorly. Director James Ponsoldt returned to his composing collaborator from The End of the Tour, Danny Elfman, to provide the music for The Circle. The composer was at a point in his career when unconventional, lesser projects beckoning quirky or electronic scores were more commonplace, and this one definitely fits that mould. The composer approached the film with synthetics in mind; even if the budget didn't demand them, the subject matter certainly could. Not much else about Elfman's strategy for The Circle makes sense, though, as his music is either inconsequential or really inappropriate in the movie. Rather than emphasize the struggle for identity and personality in the characters, the composer went wild with retro synthetics as an accent of perverse coolness for the concepts represented by "The Circle." It's almost as if Elfman decided to offer the brainwashing music for the surveillance element in the film rather than the actual people involved or societal implications, the composer rarely attempting to make the music sound even remotely organic, even if synthetically so. It's the kind of work where you cannot tell from the score alone what genre the film even belongs to, much less feel compelled to care about it.

Elfman is known for employing some really creative and oddball synthetic sounds in his wackier scores, and The Circle reaches back to terrible analog tones from the 1980's not appropriate for this forward-looking story, causing significant friction with some scenes. Keyboarding dominates, with burping rhythms and edgier electronic scaping sounds joining occasional string-like representations, celeste, guitar, and vocal manipulations to yield a strangely backwards ambience. Elfman's execution of these sounds is not sufficiently creepy in scenes that should be moderately suspenseful, his clunky keyboarding more akin to his humorously terrible Aliens, Clowns & Geeks at times than this film's genre. Straight action scenes like "Fog Attack" and "Finding Mercer" offer grating electronic mayhem with little larger purpose. Almost just as frustrating as the ill-conceived tone of Elfman's synthetics is his barely functional thematic narrative. He conjures a main identity but doesn't apply it in ways that make much sense in the story. Led initially by three pairs of rising notes, this theme seems intentionally difficult to nail down during all of "Into a Circle." It returns in "Conspiracy" with some semblance of organic strings in chopping mode and more tentative in "Chasing Amy" on piano over blurting rhythms. The theme starts to lose cohesion in "Stolen Kayak," however, and it becomes longer identity that receives more development in "Mae Takes Over," suggesting planning for the maturation of the main character that never enunciates itself clearly enough in the score's themes. More impactful is a surveillance rhythm that develops out of minor third alternations throughout the work that become more hypnotic as threats emerge. Its meandering piano line over bubbly rhythmic blurting in "Inner Sanctum" is later barely hinted in the rhythm of "Aftermath" before dominating the first half of "Finding Mercer," interrupting nascent melodic material in "Toilet Talk," and becoming almost exuberant at the outset of "Ascension." An upbeat, somewhat chipper secondary theme bounces through "Wonderland," extends to an ascending thematic alternative in "Intake," and is reprised in "Return to Wonderland." Otherwise, the score wanders through unrelated singular ideas. The digitally prickly "Happy Little Robots" is among the worst cues of Elfman's career, while the slurred tonalities of "Happy Love Theme" make it stand, likely intentionally, among the composer's worst love themes. An odd crescendo at the end of "Mae Takes Over" with voice and guitar doesn't achieve any purpose. The "Simple Gifts" song doesn't fit with the personality of the score, either. In the end, this score is horrible in the film and will induce insanity on its short album. Rarely do composers miss the tone and narrative of a story so badly.  *

TRACK LISTINGS:

Total Time: 40:49

• 1. Into a Circle (1:00) • 2. Wonderland (2:01) • 3. Happy Little Robots (1:33) • 4. Inner Sanctum (1:26) • 5. Lonely Kayak (0:57) • 6. Aftermath (2:51) • 7. Upgrade (0:45) • 8. Panic Text (2:05) • 9. Conspiracy (1:18) • 10. Chasing Amy (0:45) • 11. Fog Attack (1:36) • 12. Stolen Kayak (2:52)

• 13. Finding Mercer (3:02) • 14. Toilet Talk (1:15) • 15. Intake (2:06) • 16. Ascension (1:03) • 17. Mae Takes Over (4:24) • 18. Simple Gifts* (4:41) Bonus Tracks: • 19. More Happy Little Robots (2:19) • 20. Return to Wonderland (1:34) • 21. Happy Love Theme (1:11)

NOTES & QUOTES:

The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.

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