December 4, 2013

  • Elfman Gets "Restless"

    Gus Van Sant’s little seen Restless (2011) is a romantic drama with a bit of a maudlin theme.  The young lovers, played by Henry Hopper and Mia Wasikowska, make for an interesting coupling.  He likes to attend funerals and she is terminally ill.  An odd encounter with the ghost of a Japanese Kamikaze pilot frames their relationship.  After appearing at Cannes in 2011, the film made the festival circuit route and received a limited release in the fall of that year here in the states.  These aspects of the story must certainly have appealed to composer Danny Elfman whose resulting score is striking.

    Restless is going to sit rather differently in Elfman’s overall film music canon.  This is a very intimate little score of gentle melodic ideas, somewhat guitar driven, with a delicate sound reminiscent of indie-film music.  Mallet percussion lend the score an additionally light texture and provide further minimalist-like gestures with repetitive smaller cells driving the music.  These shifts in color, sometimes coupled with string responses, create a shimmering tapestry upon which the composer hangs his melodic material.  While one can certainly hear Elfman’s signature style, hearkening back to his earlier more experimental days, many will see it as an alternative approach to Thomas Newman’s intimate scoring styles.  The way there is a melancholy shift in the music in places like “Morgue” is also part of the composer’s style coupled with slight bell-like sounds.  It is still uniquely Elfman and most fans will surely want to explore the many aspects of this little score that will nestle against Promised Land and Milk as unique in the composer’s canon of film scores.  Connections to Good Will Hunting are also appropriate as “Weepy Donuts”—an in-joke—has a titular appearance here.  Subtle gestures are rarely called upon these days and this gentle score is filled with them.