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Review of Darkman (Danny Elfman)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you just can't get enough tortured tragedy out of
Danny Elfman's music for Batman and wouldn't mind a re-hash of
its suspense motifs and action mode in a lesser-quality rendition.
Avoid it... if you appreciate Elfman's early action brooding but seek an interesting variation on that style, for Darkman really struggles to establish its own identity in this period of the composer's career.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Darkman: (Danny Elfman) Long before composer Danny
Elfman would team with director Sam Raimi for the highly successful
first two Spider-Man films, there came the very early Raimi film
Darkman, the start of the director/producer's fascination with
comic book heroes. After the massive success of Batman in 1989,
for both the fate of comic book characters on the big screen and for
Elfman in that genre, a significant number of other adaptations began to
flow into theatres throughout the 1990's. Interestingly, Darkman
was one of the few not to be based on a historical character. Instead of
visualizing an existing character, Raimi and a host of writers concocted
the story of Dr. Peyton Westlake, a talented scientist experimenting
with synthetic skin who is left for dead and badly mangled after hitmen
destroy his lab. In the process, Westlake's nerves are altered by
doctors and he achieves both superhuman strength and uncontrollable
rage. Obsessed with the destruction of his enemies, as well as the lost
love of his girlfriend, the Darkman goes about his revenge while using
his synthetic skin to assume multiple characters, including his former
self. A nightmare of a picture, Darkman is as much a product of
its Gothic surroundings as Batman was, and it's no surprise
whatsoever that Elfman was anxious to score the picture. At that period
in Elfman's career, the composer couldn't get enough of morbidly tragic
characters, and his music for those identities was usually as consistent
in its symphonic depth as it was in its success. While Darkman is
not as well-known as Batman and Edward Scissorhands, its
themes contain many of the same basic structures that Elfman fans have
come to love from the morbidly tragic scores from that period of
Elfman's work. Unfortunately, Darkman also suffers from the
effect of using the table scraps from those other scores. The composer
was still attempting to broaden his technical proficiency at writing
lengthy cues, and his music from these years sometimes struggled to
approach similar topics from different directions. In the case of
Darkman, the score is reminiscent of Batman Returns in
that the underlying composition deserved a far more vibrant performance
and recording. A 2020 remastered and expanded presentation doesn't
appreciably solve this nagging issue on album.
Everything about Darkman is saturated with the same dense, dark, and determined styles that made Batman a classic the previous year. But like Dick Tracy, another 1990 comic-style score from Elfman, Darkman is less coherent and more heavily reliant on overbearing style over the substance of its thematic ideas. Much of this phenomenon relates to the underlying rhythmic movement of the march that Elfman utilizes for the "Main Titles" and the related waltz, which becomes more evident in "The Plot Unfolds." The title theme, dominated by a pair of nearly identical four-note phrases, offers all the fascinating desolation and hopeless suffering that we can hope for in the story, and Elfman weaves this theme into his score with dexterity, especially in the short but haunting "Julie Discovers Darkman" cue. A separate love theme struggles to assert itself in the first half of the score and is eventually overtaken by agonizingly tortured string renditions of the main theme. The suspense and action underscore is highly reminiscent of the motifs used throughout Batman, with "High Steel" combining the bubbling timpani, rapid trumpet blasts, and abundant cymbal crashes and snare rips together with rolling bass string motifs very similar to action sequences in the earlier work. While this music is entertaining at a basic level, its continued obvious use here makes Darkman perhaps the most blatant re-hash score of Elfman's career. Some of this material was destined for better expression in The Nightmare Before Christmas. The best arrangement of this music exists in the Beetlejuice redux, "Woe, The Darkman... Woe," sometimes accessed as a concert piece from the score. Two standout cues distinguish themselves from the continuous re-use: both "Rage/Peppy Science" and "Carnival From Hell" play to the carnival atmosphere in the film, with the latter cue serving as an almost intolerably sick interpretation of calliope music by Elfman, though he predictably lets the chaos of the full symphony eat away at the barrel organ until we're in full horror swing. There is a touch of Christopher Young's Hellraiser influence here as well. The score ends with one of Elfman's weaker finales, lacking in any ambitious crescendo or ultimate musical expression of futility. In retrospect, it's very easy for Darkman to slip through the cracks in Elfman's career; there's just so little original style here that the score leaves you seeking its close cousins, all of which superior. The 2020 expanded album is moderately interesting but doesn't alter the equation by nearly doubling the length. It aims for only the most ardent enthusiasts of Elfman's most tortured brooding. **
TRACK LISTINGS:
1990 MCA Album:
Total Time: 40:13
2020 La-La Land Album: Total Time: 116:00
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert of the 1990 MCA album includes no extra information about the score
or film. That of the 2020 La-La Land set contains lengthy commentary about both.
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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 Darkman are Copyright © 2006, 2020, MCA Records, La-La Land Records and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 9/24/96 and last updated 7/19/20. |
