Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #1,415
Written 3/17/10
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Buy it... if you seek ultimate proof that Hans Zimmer can uncork
whimsically breezy and setting-appropriate music of immense personality
and style with only his one-man electronic ensemble.
Avoid it... if you quickly tire of Zimmer's rhythmic light drama
and romance music of this era in his career, because Driving Miss
Daisy is simply a bluesy variation on those early trademarks of the
composer's work.
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| Zimmer |
Driving Miss Daisy: (Hans Zimmer) The surprise hit
of late 1989 and early 1990 was Bruce Beresford's Driving Miss
Daisy, one of the most highly acclaimed adaptations of an
off-Broadway play to ever hit the big screen. Morgan Freeman reprised
his role from the play and was joined by Jessica Tandy and Dan Aykroyd
to form a cast that, along with the film, swept through many of the
major awards that year. Most of that recognition came because of the
production's ability to remain light-hearted in its character
interactions (and PG rating) while also making comments about prejudices
against blacks and Jews in America's state of Georgia prior to the civil
rights movement. Too old to drive herself around the 1940's countryside,
a feisty widow (Tandy) is provided a driver (Freemen) by her son
(Aykroyd) and, despite their differences, the woman and her chauffeur
become close friends. That bond spans more than two decades and several
events that defy racial and religious prejudices of the era, and the
film concludes on an incredibly sweet and positive note. The small
production, with the help of its immense critical acclaim and awards
wins, went on to gross almost twenty times its budget. It was the second
year in a row in which rising composer Hans Zimmer had scored the top
Oscar-winning picture, though his music for Driving Miss Daisy,
despite making an impact in the picture, only received a Grammy
nomination. Given the film's slim budget, it's no surprise that the
soundtrack was reportedly entirely synthetic, featuring no live
instruments in the mix. But what definitely is a surprise, and has
always been when listening to this score, is the fact that Zimmer
managed to produce so much personality and style from his electronic
ensemble for Driving Miss Daisy. The amount of genuine flavor in
the solo performances of melody in the work is symbolic of the best of
Zimmer's early creativity. This music has all the bluesy and/or jazzy
sensibilities of similar passages in Thomas Newman's Fried Green
Tomatoes and Jerry Goldsmith's Love Field, but without the
benefit of acoustic instrumentation. There is a whimsical, breezy aspect
to the score that gives it an undeniably easy flow, too. When you hear
about long-time collectors of Zimmer's music complaining about how
lifeless the composer's eventual blockbuster mannerisms sound (despite
the improvement in synthesizer and sample technologies), scores like
Driving Miss Daisy remain the benchmark by which those
comparisons are drawn.
Although the rhythmic movement and general tone of the
keyboarded string and piano samples in
Driving Miss Daisy are
very familiar to Zimmer's other efforts at the time, he infuses a
healthy dose of Southern character in his choice of samples and the
progressions they play. Outside of the composer's standard light drama
elements (a staple of his early romantic comedies), there exist emulated
banjos, honky tonk piano, tapped percussion, saxophone, and clarinet to
freshen up the atmosphere. The clarinet is of particular intrigue,
because its application to one of the score's two themes (the famous one
of pizzazz) is extremely convincing. At no time does Zimmer's electronic
approach ever sound inappropriate for this context, further testimony
that the right kind of synthetic handling can work in the setting of
nearly any story. The two themes that meander throughout
Driving Miss
Daisy and occupy the majority of its time are each quite effective.
The aforementioned primary idea of considerable zip features all the
jaunty enthusiasm that Tandy's character brings to the film. Its
memorable bluesy progressions represent the South in a spirit of bright
sunshine rarely heard from an industry cynical about the region's
politics. Every time you hear the faux clarinet perform this theme, it's
surprising to fathom that it may not be acoustic; performances of the
theme in Zimmer's later concert presentations do utilize the real thing.
The secondary theme for
Driving Miss Daisy alternates with the
previous one several times in "Driving" and actually receives much more
airtime. It completely supplants the other theme in "Home" and "Georgia"
and brings genuine affection into the relationship between the two
leads, eventually twisted into the score's only challenging rendition of
any idea in the latter cue's conclusion. Some listeners may find the
simple, wholesome tone (and progressions) of this secondary theme to be
similar to Randy Edelman's style of the 90's. The entire score is about
as innocuous as one could imagine, only building to any significant
level of depth in the latter half of "End Titles." In that summary cue,
light rock loops and the score's only appreciable use of counterpoint
(in the form of synth strings) beef up the two themes. The detractions
in the music for
Driving Miss Daisy aren't substantial, but they
will bother some listeners. First, the score runs under 25 minutes on
album and is joined by good, but incongruous source pieces heard in the
film. The dissonant passage at the end of "Georgia" and a similarity in
the tone of the keyboarding to both Edelman's and Vangelis' work may be
a nagging distraction for some. At the end of the day, though, you can't
help but get a smile on your face when that infectious clarinet theme
breaks loose.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
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Bias Check:
For Hans Zimmer reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.85
(in 128 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 2.96
(in 299,193 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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