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Review of Fifty Shades of Grey (Danny Elfman)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you have always admired Danny Elfman's light rock
sensibilities, that sound merged here with skittish string personality
to create a perfectly cool but slightly nervous and unpredictable
environment.
Avoid it... if you expect anything truly sultry or straight out cheesy pornography music for this topic, because Elfman tackles the assignment with perhaps too much intelligence for such indulgence.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Fifty Shades of Grey: (Danny Elfman) If the
popularity of British author E. L. James' bestselling novel "Fifty
Shades of Grey" and the 2015 film adaptation of it is any indication of
social desires, then we must really be one sexually repressed lot.
Spawned from fan fiction relating to the popular "Twilight" series of
books, the Fifty Shades of Grey concept was nothing less than a
sleazy bondage fantasy that somehow managed to acquire the taste of
women in the mainstream, making the novel one of the most highly sought
properties by film studios in the early 2010's. The adaptation stays
true to the original plot, following the story of a rather average and
unexciting undergraduate female in Vancouver, Washington coming into
contact with a wealthy young Seattle executive and commencing a
contractual relationship with him that involves a variety of kinky sex
rituals mainly related to bondage. Despite the fact that the story is
basically trash, Fifty Shades of Grey did achieve some notable
milestones, including lawsuits between Universal Pictures and a porn
parody production company, protests from both fundamentalist religious
and women's organizations over the content of the sex, controversy over
skirting the dreaded NC-17 MPAA rating, and shattered box office records
in a variety of categories immediately upon its debut. The fact remains,
though, that no glossy exterior and quantity of nudity can salvage a
badly written script, and much of that box office return owes to the
taboo nature of the concept in general. Let's face it; organized
religion is losing the battle for morality in the long term, and whether
or not you believe that this film exploits women, you have to commend
the studio for feeding the apparent repressed sexual desire of women
worldwide. The song compilation soundtrack for Fifty Shades of
Grey, presenting a number of new cover versions of favorites and
some fresh material, was an equal bestseller in several nations. Lost in
the equation was Danny Elfman's unsurprisingly competent score for the
film, the project well suited for his own balance of knowledgeable
musical technique and a kinky sense of humor. The composer has, since
the beginning of his career, maintained a side track that features his
soft rock inclinations, evident in Anywhere But Here and parts of
Reel Steel, among others. Combine that sound with that of his
music for Errol Morris documentaries and you have a general idea about
what you'll hear in Fifty Shades of Grey, albeit with the romance
quotient a little tortured by design in the process.
The ensemble Elfman employs for Fifty Shades of Grey is predictable, a string section joining piano, electric and acoustic guitars, electric bass, limited woodwinds, metallic accents, general rock percussion, and mixed choir. The straight light rock material from Elfman is always pleasant when he doesn't attempt to steer it in To Die For directions, and here it is conservatively straight forward. The same could be said of the guitars and piano, while the choir is tasked with moments of orgasmic bliss (literally). The devious portion of the score is owed to the skittish string accompaniment, that group of players the most versatile in spanning the gulf between wishy-washy and generic tones for the lead female and the exciting and unpredictable nature of the male. That great disparity existing between the two characters guides their themes; the former receives a rather tepid and undefined idea in "Ana's Theme" that later in the score oddly resembles Dario Marianelli's slow string crescendos in V for Vendetta ("Did that Hurt?" and "Show Me"). The latter's theme, dominated by a series rising minor thirds in a trio of notes, accompanies all the sex scenes, born in "The Red Room" but flourishing later in "A Spanking," "The Contract," "Ana and Christian," "Counting to Six," and "Variations on a Shade." The highlights of the score are those cues above that are allowed to simply flow freely in the light rock realm, both "Ana and Christian" and "Variations on a Shade" excellent and long, rambling expressions of the idea (the latter even has some nice, stuttering percussion style near the end). Balancing these easy listening moments are several tentative explorations of the female's theme in cues like "Then Don't!" and "Where Am I?" that don't accomplish much in the narrative other than to reinforce her submission. Elfman's humor does shine through at time, the slightly more mysterious "Going for Coffee" plucking away on strings (reprised in "The Art of War" with darker shades) and "Bliss" offering the choir in not so uncertain terms (its return in "Show Me" is eerie in its uncertainty, a nice technique). Perhaps the most amusing cue in the score is its first, "Shades of Grey" a fanciful recapitulation of Elfman's main theme from The Unknown Known, the unique piano melody in this track very, very similar but with a twist of John Ottman's The Usual Suspects at its end. Like The Unknown Known, this stuff is pure Elfman, and the light rock highlights of Fifty Shades of Grey are just as comfortable in his career. You have to admire what he managed to achieve with this score, the plot really not meriting more than a phone-in score. Even so, half of the score passes without much notice, leaving the twenty minutes of cool, skittish highlights to carry it to a fourth star. ****
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 46:21
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert includes a list of performers but no extra information about the score or film.
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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 Fifty Shades of Grey are Copyright © 2015, Republic Records and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 3/8/15 (and not updated significantly since). |
