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Review of A Simple Plan (Danny Elfman)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... only if you are a true Danny Elfman collector, for the
instrumentally complicated but minimalistic A Simple Plan is
among the composer's least accessible works.
Avoid it... if you require more than just a few minutes of elegance and melody to accompany Elfman's chilly, somber, and alienating shades of gray for an equally disturbing narrative.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
A Simple Plan: (Danny Elfman) In director Sam
Raimi's journey to the mainstream, A Simple Plan was an important
critical success. The almost universally praised 1998 film was a
chilling, methodical exercise in character development. Scott Smith's
adaptation of his best-selling novel was guided to the screen with a
little indirect assistance from accomplished names like John Boorman and
the Coen Brothers, and the film's uncanny resemblance to the atmosphere
of Fargo is no coincidence. In the story, four relatives and
friends with normal lifestyles in America's Midwest discover an
abandoned, crashed plane with millions of dollars on board. Their
different ideas on what to do with the money (and their seemingly
simplistic plan that eventually unravels) leads to off-kilter humor,
cold-hearted betrayal and, ultimately, bloodshed. The film's frigid
setting is its most intriguing characteristic, and it is this bleak
environment that composer Danny Elfman was attempting to accentuate with
his score. A Simple Plan is one of many effective collaborations
between Elfman and Raimi, though it's also one of the least accessible
to the composer's more casual fans. This work was among many in the
middle to late 1990's that reaffirmed the composer's departure from the
large-scale orchestral majesty of his earlier output. In the list of
Elfman's more minimalistic efforts, A Simple Plan is perhaps the
most sparsely rendered and difficult to enjoy in a traditional sense.
Elfman used the words "unique," "tricky," "fun," "different," and "very,
very simple" when describing this score. Fans of the composer are
correct in stating that A Simple Plan is anything but simple when
placed in context with the film's equally non-simple plot. On album, the
score is significantly more difficult to grasp, proving that rather
being revolutionary, it is simply different.
To the surprise of both some of his regular co-workers and fans, Elfman dropped the brass and percussion sections of the orchestra from his ensemble for A Simple Plan and replaced them with a bloated woodwind section that included nine alto and bass flutes. In an even more effective move, he re-tuned a few pianos and banjos so that they constantly sound half a tone off, a purposeful choice to aid the sense of disenchantment in the film. An electric bass defines the low registers (as was common for the composer during that era) and often contributes to the score's slow and deliberate rhythmic monotony. The electric bass' pacing is the music's closest connection to A Civil Action, which is often argued both favorably and unfavorably in comparison to A Simple Plan. Distant violins perform simple background accompaniment for the flutes, banjos, pianos, and a variety of unusual instruments that sound remarkably similar in parts to Thomas Newman's like-minded experiments at the time. Elfman himself performs the majority of these sounds, most of which are merely the results of his original tinkering with, as he states, "odd string struck sounds, glass sounds, and harmonic sounds" that he collects for such applications. Thematically, the score is understated, introducing both of its themes in "Main Title." The primary identity of the score comes first, and it is this quirky, fragmented motif that perfectly matches the instruments that perform it. Its progressions are far from obvious, leaving the more sensitive secondary theme later in the cue as the score's only really memorable tune. Heard at about 3:00 into "Main Title" and maturing in "Death," this harmonic idea is a source of tender comfort in an otherwise unforgiving musical landscape. Also like Newman's unconventional work of the same era, Elfman allows the instrumentation to overshadow the structures its performs, leaving a general impression rather than a clear memory. As mentioned before, the score's effectiveness in the film doesn't translate to its album, where its effect is genuinely disturbing. The most similar listening experience in Elfman's career to that date was likely Dolores Claiborne, a score that continues to serve as a true test for the hardiness of Elfman collectors. A Simple Plan could serve the same purpose, for it is terribly alienating and distant, with very subtle thematic exploration and a lack of much truly rewarding material. Its heart is cold and the skewed instrumentation causes it to be a necessarily unpleasant listening experience. The score does have one solid bright spot, as well as one major irritation. The somber atmosphere breaks into a sweat during the degeneration into sheer noise and sound effects of "Tracks in the Snow." Immediately following, however, is the quite attractive 5-minute "Death" cue that offers the secondary theme on melancholy flute, piano, and strings with a faint romantic spirit that appeals as a ghostly interpretation of John Barry's typical style. Overall, the score for A Simple Plan is difficult to appreciate or enjoy without knowledge of the film with which to correlate the two. It is an extremely original and lonely piece of music, and surely not an album that will cheer you up. In this work, Elfman's creativity ironically flourished to the smallest and simplest level of his career, leaving some fans yearning for even the flair of the mambo from Flubber. Its complexity in technicality, aided by a very crisp recording quality, makes the score a good one for study. But for casual fans, it'll be too disheartening. The Compass III release (one of the short-lived label's first) doesn't include some key cues from the film in its 31+ minutes of score, however it does provide three source songs from the film. From this point, Elfman would go on to experiment with xylophones, marimbas, thumb pianos, African drums, and other creative elements in Instinct, another score that has fallen into obscurity in the composer's career. **
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 43:51
(only about 31 minutes of Danny Elfman score)
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert includes no extra information about the score or film. In early
1999, Danny Elfman stated the following about this score:
Very often in a movie I design the score around a sound or sounds that I think will be unique to that picture. Certainly in a movie like A Simple Plan it needed some special or unique tones. The tone of the movie was very tricky. It was really fun... different... very simple score, really, for A Simple Plan. I didn't mean it as a pun; it really was."
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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 A Simple Plan are Copyright © 1999, Compass III Records and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 2/10/99 and last updated 5/28/08. |
