Check it out... if you wish to hear Michael Giacchino paint a variety
of musical ideas across a broad canvas while staying rooted in his style
developed in previous Pixar films.
Skip it... if you
insist on a homogeneous listening experience on album or expect a film about
emotions to have a score saturated with shameless romanticism, Giacchino
instead opting for a more restrained, yet still effective, approach to the
moments of emotional potency.
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| Custom cover for Inside Out, courtesy of HQCovers |
WRITTEN BY VIKRAM LAKHANPAL
"Giacchino
has crafted an intelligent, nuanced score... while occasionally lacking
cohesion on album, it accentuates its visual content."
If Michael Giacchino’s 2015 has taught me anything,
it’s the importance of good professional connections. The prolific composer has
now scored 4 big-budget films released this year, three of which were helmed by
directors he’s previously collaborated with, while the fourth director (Jurassic World’s Colin Trevorrow) hired
Giacchino after a recommendation from Tomorrowland
director Brad Bird. See kids, even when you’re a well-off Oscar-winning
composer, it still helps to know people!
His latest score is for Pixar’s Inside Out, directed by Pete Docter (Up, Monsters Inc.). Set
mostly inside the head of Riley, a prepubescent girl, the film deals with the
different emotions in her head as they try to help her cope with moving from
Minnesota to San Francisco. The film has been overwhelmingly well received,
with praise lent towards the pitch-perfect cast (Amy Poehler as the embodiment
of Joy? Lewis Black as the voice of Anger?), the typically excellent animation,
and a sharp, witty, yet emotional script that dragged-along parents may
appreciate more than their kids.
Although Giacchino’s musical output this year has been
widely praised in the film score world, the reception of the features they have accompanied has ranged from downright putrid (Jupiter Ascending), to iffy (Tomorrowland),
to moderately positive (Jurassic World)
to ecstatic (Inside Out), with only
the latter two seeing any success at the box office, ironically while dueling
one another week after week for the past month. Giacchino must look at the returns
and think the inverse of the Alien vs.
Predator tagline: whoever loses, I win.
Interestingly enough, the score for Inside Out has received the most
lukewarm reception in the film music community, passed off by some as pleasant yet unexceptional, lightweight fare (though most scores would sound lightweight
next to the orchestral bombast of Jurassic
World and Jupiter Ascending).
However, a less dense instrumental palette should not obscure the fact that
Giacchino has crafted an intelligent, nuanced score, combining the best
elements of sound design and leitmotivic writing into a package that, while
occasionally lacking cohesion on album, accentuates its visual content.
Many of Giacchino’s animated scores are based in an
easy-listening, jazzy style, and Inside
Out continues this trend, the composer employing a variety of piano, plucked
stringed instruments and unique percussive devices (of which I am not
well-versed enough in to identify) to create the general texture. Additionally,
a number of novelty instruments (and possibly sound effects) are used to
maintain a faint ambiance. These sound design elements establish the setting of
Riley’s mind in the same way the big band brass in The Incredibles and the accordion and other archetypal French
voices in Ratatouille did.
Giacchino anchors the score around three main themes,
each introduced in the three opening tracks. “Bundle of Joy” presents the motif
for Poehler’s character, the first emotion Riley experiences upon her birth.
Joy’s theme is a plucky, slightly naïve melody on piano that emerges from a
haze of ethereal sound design, created by ambient strings and glass bowl
effects, with soft guitar counterpoint. This theme is offered little
opportunity for variation outside of the instruments it’s initially performed on, part a
minor inversion and development in “Rainbow Flyer.” The second major theme is
for Sadness, introduced at the outset of “Team Building” through a lumbering tuba
solo, and it serves as one of the score’s strengths. Though this comedic incarnation appears but once more, Giacchino gently implies it with the same chord
progression in “Down in the Dumps” and “Joy Turns to Sadness/A Growing
Personality,” when Sadness shows how useful she can be. The third motif, a
light waltzing tune, addresses Riley’s mind and its operations. First appearing
in “Nomanisone Island/National Movers,” (Giacchino seems to have restrained
himself quite a bit when it comes to the obnoxious cue puns this time around) the
theme prances along when everything runs smoothly, and turns introspective when
it doesn't.
Although these themes get evenly passed around for the
first several cues, the film’s structure seems to hinder Giacchino’s thematic intentions. After a militaristic interlude in “Riled Up” that evokes The Incredibles, Giacchino abandons
these three major themes for significant stretches to dedicate time towards creating thematic vignettes
for various regions of the mind. Your mileage with the score on album will vary
depending on your tolerance for obnoxiously upbeat themes that I can only
describe as “kiddie” (“Chasing the Pink Elephant” and “Dream Productions”), and
for cues that accentuate more surrealist moments of the film that evoke
late-80s Danny Elfman that can only be described as “zany” (“Dream a Little
Nightmare,” “Escaping the Subconscious,” and the brilliant “Abstract Thought”). Thematically, “Down in the Dumps” is the highlight of this
middle section, opening with standard Giacchino action strings before a soft
rendition of the Sadness chords cathartically develop into a less flighty
rendition of Joy’s theme, foreshadowing the emotional climax in “Joy Turns to
Sadness.” However, this middle section, while creative in its musical
world-building, plays as tonal schizophrenia away from the film. The movie
plows fertile ground for which Giacchino plants plenty of seeds, but one almost
wishes for an unnecessary sequel so we can hear these seeds blossom into
something greater.
The score’s narrative arc kicks into high gear with
“We Can Still Stop Her,” when Riley’s emotional turmoil is expressed through an
eighth note ostinato in an off-kilter 9/4, introduced on piano before it is further elaborated on with strings and the rest of the ensemble for a
solid three minutes. After a somber iteration of the operation theme, soft and
suspended in thick sound design ("Tears of Joy"), we arrive at “Rainbow Flyer,” one of the
emotional peaks of the score. The cue energetically builds before a sudden
silence at 1:14, out of which emerges a beautiful 3 note cycle, looping through
an authentic cadence, iterating itself with more layers until it reaches a
powerful climax. The motif appears only once prior to this instance (“Memory
Lanes”), and then once again afterwards (“The Joy of Credits”), and whilst it
bears resemblance to other “emotional” Giacchino themes, it remains aptly poignant on its own terms.
It’s a damn shame it isn't used with more frequency in this score.
“Chasing Down Sadness” continues development of the
Turmoil theme across the ensemble, with input from the winds, percussion, and
something that sounds like an organ that can glissando (the first of many to
imitate Hans Zimmer’s genius in Interstellar, I'm sure). “Joy Turns to Sadness/A Growing Personality” wraps the story
together, delicately shifting from the minor key into Sadness’ chords (again
invoking early Elfman, albeit his tender side this time sans children’s choir)
and eventually into a flicker of hope that everything might turn out alright. After
a moment, Joy’s theme reemerges in its fullest rendition before segueing into
the waltzing operational theme once more to wrap up the film. The album
concludes with “The Joy of Credits,” which assembles Joy’s theme, the operating motif, and a couple of minor themes from the middle section into a pleasant
lounge-jazz suite. At the very end of the track is the Tripledent Gum jingle, a
song used in a hilarious recurring gag throughout the film.
Inside Out is a well-tailored score to its film, in many ways serving as a
continuation of Giacchino’s animation style as shown in Up, Ratatouille, and The Incredibles. Every moment fits the
film with precision, throwing a strong emotional right hook when necessary, and
playing dope-a-rope when the film needs something different. Without the film’s
context, however, Inside Out becomes
somewhat disjointed and schizophrenic in its middle passages. If you haven’t
seen the film and are going to try the score on its own, 1) What’s your
problem? It’s a great movie, go see it already! and 2) Be prepared for
Giacchino to seemingly go off the rails with intelligently written but
apparently superfluous music from time to time. You can purchase Inside Out on Amazon or iTunes, here and here.
8.0
Additional notes about release: Amazon's physical copy offers an additional track ('Lava'), which hails from the short film of the same name that accompanies screenings of Inside Out.
Track Listing
| 1. | Bundle of Joy | 2:48 |
| 2. | Team Building | 2:18 |
| 3. | Nomanisone Island / National Movers | 4:20 |
| 4. | Overcoming Sadness | 0:51 |
| 5. | Free Skating | 0:59 |
| 6. | First Day of School | 2:02 |
| 7. | Riled Up | 1:02 |
| 8. | Goofball No Longer | 1:11 |
| 9. | Memory Lanes | 1:22 |
| 10. | The Forgetters | 0:50 |
| 11. | Chasing the Pink Elephant | 1:55 |
| 12. | Abstract Thought | 1:47 |
| 13. | Imagination Land | 1:25 |
| 14. | Down in the Dumps | 1:47 |
| 15. | Dream Productions | 1:43 |
| 16. | Dream a Little Nightmare | 1:50 |
| 17. | The Subconscious Basement | 2:01 |
| 18. | Escaping the Subconscious | 2:09 |
| 19. | We Can Still Stop Her | 2:54 |
| 20. | Tears of Joy | 2:39 |
| 21. | Rainbow Flyer | 2:58 |
| 22. | Chasing Down Sadness | 1:45 |
| 23. | Joy Turns to Sadness / A Growing Personality | 7:49 |
| 24. | The Joy of Credits | 8:18 |
| Total Album Time: | 58:43 |
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