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Review of Corpse Bride (Danny Elfman)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you cherish every moment of Danny Elfman's melancholy
writing for strings and choir and await another morbidly entertaining
extension of his songwriting abilities.
Avoid it... if you seek a reprise of the superior narrative integrity of the songs in the comparable The Nightmare Before Christmas, for those in Corpse Bride are weak, too infrequent, and lacking Elfman's natural singing voice.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Corpse Bride: (Danny Elfman) There must be some
kind of mental condition that describes the specific derangement that
director Tim Burton suffers that causes him to be so fascinated with
graceful portrayals of death and stark realities. His stop motion
animated film The Nightmare Before Christmas, considered an
anomaly and a failure by Disney at its debut, turned out to not only be
a rare singularity in modern film, but also a mass cult favorite. Its
catering to both the morbid symbols of the underworld and boundlessly
hopeful worlds of different holidays combined with Danny Elfman's
popular musical numbers to create, at the very least, a very memorable
piece of entertainment. Despite the great following that The
Nightmare Before Christmas has continued to build, it took Burton
and Elfman a dozen years before resurrecting the same stop
motion/musical formula. There was considerable studio interest in having
Burton create a straight sequel to the 1993 classic, but the director
chose not to risk the legacy of the original. However, Corpse
Bride could largely be considered an extension of the same concept.
While it's by no means a sequel to the previous hit, the common
treatment of macabre underworld elements in various shades of gray,
along with Elfman's similarly conceived musical ideas, cause the 2005
movie to be as close to a follow-up as anyone will likely ever see.
Traversing the worlds of the living and dead, with multiple weddings of
an old-English style, Burton's fantasy challenges viewers with a drab,
colorless portrayal of the real world (as real as the stop motion and
bizarre 3-D miniature sets can allow) in contrast to a significantly
livelier, more colorful existence in the afterlife. The love triangle
that exists between the three primary characters (two women, one dead
and one alive, both with an interest in marrying the same dweeby man) is
accented by Burton's usual flair for stereotyped auxiliary characters,
and these folks once again have a major role to play in the songs for
Corpse Bride. Elfman obviously flourishes in this environment,
not only writing in perpetually somber tones, but also with the chorus
and instrumentation of choice for a maximum emotional effect. Written
concurrently by Elfman were the scores for Burton's Corpse Bride
and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but whereas the latter was
a much more major production that saw its songs go through significant
revisions over time, Corpse Bride was a project that Elfman
deemed fun and comparatively easy.
The base sound for Corpse Bride is nearly identical to that of The Nightmare Before Christmas (why mess with something that worked?), and the concept of high-energy ensemble cast songs returns as well. So faithful to the previous score's structure is Elfman that we even get the 1930's New Orleans jazz and blues treatment for the underworld characters, a 180-degree turn from the harpsichord-laced pseudo classical environment of the "real" European world. The major difference between The Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride is that the latter film devalues its musical song side by striking the idea of a narration by the primary character. Without a narrative flow in the songs like that which Jack Skellington had so brilliantly provided, Corpse Bride's songs exist without any connection to each other and have no central voice. The two wedding preparation songs ("According to Plan" and "The Wedding Song") are creatively juxtaposed in their other-worldly, disparate treatments of the ceremonies, but the performers speak their roles for the most part and the themes Elfman bases them upon can't carry the lack of strong vocals. The connection between "The Wedding Song" and the style of Gilbert and Sullivan is so thinly veiled that it may prove distracting for some listeners. The "Remains of the Day" song is the "fun" piece in the film, and although Elfman's emulation of a gritty, throaty voice of a black man is admirable (he must have been coarse for a week after recording his role for this song), his more recognizable frenetic vocal performances reside in the consistently familiar "Wedding Song." The only truly redeeming song is "Tears to Shed," in which the corpse bride offers her lament with a longing reminiscent of Sally's song in the previous film. Even in this entry, however, Elfman is confined to Helena Bonham Carter's limited singing range at the time and she, like the others, mostly speaks her way through the song. Other than the beautiful corpse bride interludes within "Tears to Shed," the themes within the songs won't be as memorable for fans and it's doubtful that they'll stick with audiences after the closing credits of the film finish. The lyrics, in part coined by Elfman once again, are further evidence of his perverse and subversive talents, and they humorously speak as the best aspect of the songs. In Burton's world, it's no doubt that breathing is definitely "overrated." Whereas the songs in The Nightmare Before Christmas easily stole the show from the relatively minor amount of score in that film, Corpse Bride relies far more heavily on the magic of its orchestral score to accentuate the raw emotions in the story. The melodies from the songs in Corpse Bride don't occupy the majority of the score's time, which harms the songs but allows Elfman's score to stand alone as a portion warranting attention. Aside from the rambling of periodic jazz, the score is subdued and respectful, beautiful and heartbreaking. Setting aside the mixture of electronics and orchestra used in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory earlier in the year, Elfman approaches Corpse Bride with the piano and harpsichord as central elements to a traditional orchestra and choir. The several calming underscore cues tingle with the percussion of Edward Scissorhands while the more playful ones whip the strings into a frenzy a la Beetlejuice (along with that score's fiddle for the underworld) and the two most frightening action pieces belt out brass so harsh and resolute that only a reference to Sleepy Hollow can be made. Unlike the many melancholy Elfman scores of this sort that are highly inconsistent listening experiences, Corpse Bride deviates from that trend and stays a steady course; the downfall to this consistency is that Elfman never really does pull off a full-fledged crescendo of string and choir beauty, though the finale here does excel to a moderate degree. Ironically, the greatest strength of the score is also ultimately the biggest detraction from the film. For the live man at the heart of the story, Elfman wrote a lovely, albeit depressing piano melody, and this theme for Victor is the dominant idea that holds the score together. Aside from its source usage, Elfman applies it as the identity of the opening and closing titles, weaving it into an abundance of situations throughout the meat of the score. The reason this theme becomes a liability to Corpse Bride is because Elfman was never allowed to develop it into the natural primary song of the movie. He recorded a demo over sparse piano accompaniment with the finished lyrics (entitled "Erased"), and so beautiful this song could have been with a finished recording that it may have afforded Corpse Bride two things that The Nightmare Before Christmas never enjoyed: one truly dominant song to represent the film and the opportunity for consolidated awards attention for that single song. As mentioned before, a significant detraction from Corpse Bride compared to its predecessor is the lack of narrative songs (there's no doubt that four is too few to sustain the musical environment), and one full performance of "Erased" and perhaps a reprise at the end could have really helped the film maintain a more cohesive identity. Dropping the song from the movie, by all reports, was not Elfman's decision and was as much a disappointment for him as anyone. In the end, Corpse Bride suffers because it inevitably must be compared to The Nightmare Before Christmas, and while the later endeavor is a solid entry on its own merits, it fails in several important aspects of comparison. First, the weakness and infrequency of the songs once again defy the soundtrack's attempt to be defined as a musical. Eleven songs exist in The Nightmare Before Christmas, and with only four apiece, Corpse Bride and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory really can't compete in that genre. The lack of Elfman's own, natural performing voice, which is more enjoyable than even his deviant manipulations of voice for ensemble pieces, is another disappointment. This absence was lamentable in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, too, and perhaps Burton and Elfman consider his voice too tied to the Pumpkin King to suffice in different contexts. Finally, the adaptation of the songs' melodies into the underscore is rather tepid, and aside from the jazz for the underworld, not even much of the instrumental style of those songs has much of an impact on surrounding material. How the solemnly pretty portions of "Tears to Shed" didn't make more of an impact on the score is a head-scratcher. Then again, on the plus side, Elfman's score here is superior, and it will provide several splendid pieces, highlighted by the choral depth of "Into the Forest," "Finale," and the instrumental version of "Erased" in the first half of the end credits, to extend the agony in the heart of any die-hard Elfman fanatic. On album, Warner released about 50 minutes of song and score from Corpse Bride in 2005, padded by nine minutes of source jazz material for the underworld. While this presentation will be sufficient for most, the soundtrack receives better treatment on the limited 2011 set, "The Danny Elfman and Tim Burton 25th Anniversary Music Box" (reviewed separately at Filmtracks), that you can enjoy for a whopping $500. Like The Nightmare Before Christmas, numerous additional score cues, demo recordings, and orchestra-only versions of the songs from Corpse Bride are presented over several CDs on that product. The demos are important because they finally expose the work that Elfman did on Victor's song, "Erased," before it was cut. The extra score tracks amount to about fifteen minutes of music, the first two cues, "Victor & Victoria Meet" and "Victor's Escape," sizable but not adding too much that wasn't already touched upon in the rest of the score. A chronological ordering on the set's dedicated CD for Corpse Bride (CD #12) would have been preferred, but Elfman seems enamored with preserving the previously available album presentations. Ultimately, Corpse Bride has much to offer, but with its most important song dropped and its narrative thus imperiled, it remains a flawed work. ***
TRACK LISTINGS:
2005 Warner Sunset Album:
Total Time: 59:38
2011 Warner Set: Total Time: 115:03
* previously unreleased
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert of the 2005 Warner album includes no extra information about
the score or film. The 2011 Warner set features some notes from Elfman about his
choices of music for inclusion on the product.
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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 Corpse Bride are Copyright © 2005, 2011, Warner Sunset, Warner Brothers Records and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 11/12/05 and last updated 6/8/11. |
