Eager to work on a romantic comedy “that won’t make you puke,” composer Clint Mansell confessed on his MySpace blog that as the film provided “a new challenge… compared to recent movies,” he’d scored, he was eager to take a “different approach,” adding, “it was just what I was looking for.”
Yet despite my deep admiration and respect for Mansell’s musical genius, I wish I could say that the soundtrack was as memorable as the film but unfortunately it isn’t. Ironically, with a soundtrack that clocks in at less than thirty-four minutes, the problem isn’t with his work per se. No, rather it’s that Definitely, Maybe’s eighteen track disc plays like a clichéd high school tease as just when Mansell's barely exited the set-up and moved into the song itself, the tune is over nearly as abruptly as it began. Despite this, it kicks off on a strong note with the album’s theme-establishing standout track “Will Hayes For President!” which could just have easily been titled “Download This Immediately,” as it’s a great song on its own.
And right away, we realize that we’ve been introduced to a softer side of Mansell than the masculine, hard-edged combination of metal, steel, and computerized techno offered in his earliest work for Aronofsky. In fact, initially, it seems as though he’s working in the same vein as Badly Drawn Boy’s score for the movie About a Boy and Mark Mothersbaugh’s work for Wes Anderson’s first few films (especially The Royal Tenenbaums).
However, some of the deliciously groovy, techno entrenched hooks, romantic guitars, and jazzy drums Mansell utilizes end far too quickly, making us crave longer, more complete tracks to revel in as a rather large majority of Definitely, Maybe’s singles average two minutes or less with a few concluding after just forty or fifty seconds. Thereby, it makes it hard to stay entirely invested or differentiate between some of the titles as a few feel like lukewarm, unfinished exercises in theme variation of the romantic motif he establishes in the first track.
And indeed, in the next four songs, “Here Comes Summer,” “For Emily (Whomever She May Be…), “April (Come She Will)” and “Jane Eyre,” he builds that theme to a passionate effect that’s pleasant to listen to as pianos, guitars, and other instruments are added in to reinvent the same theme but ultimately it still feels like it’s an unanswered musical phrase.
While admittedly, this fits in with the constant questioning the audience and Maya wrestles with throughout the film as we struggle to identify which woman became his mate, however to employ this musically makes it frustrating for listeners who want the phrase answered.
Moreover, I couldn’t help but wonder if additional romantic themes had been introduced (perhaps one for each woman) or some of the tracks which flowed into one another naturally had been joined for the soundtrack, if it would’ve benefited the experience, since it’s hard to imagine roughly thirty-four minutes of music filling the nearly one hundred and twenty minute running time of the film. While some nice playful musical exploration occurs in “Cometh The Hour, Cometh The Man” along with “Summers Over” (one of a few typos included in the track list), the brevity of the disc is bogged down as the same familiar theme creeps into nearly every song.
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