This was Jim Carrey's first big break as a "serious" actor and while I would suggest that he was excellent, I don't think he's likely to knock off the top serious actors of our time just yet. The intruiging concept had Truman Burbank, played by Carrey as someone who appears, unknowingly in a real life soap opera. Of course, things start to go wrong and that's what makes the film so interesting. For the score, a rather than less than conventional approach was taken; I have never heard of Burkhard Dallwitz otherwise, although to be fair, his score doesn't take up the largest proportion of the album. After the brief, voice over opening cue, there is what might be deemed the main theme which is a wonderful piano melody, sadly not deployed noticably anywhere else. It is certainly a good start, but after that I think that Dallwitz's music gets rather swamped by the tracks cued in from various Philip Glass scores. In fact, some cues were written by Glass for the film especially and also stand out as noticably good. Of Dallwitz's other contributions to the score, Drive and Underground - Storm are definte highlights with some pulsing, minimalist drumming, synthesised as far as I can tell, but superbly written and using the synth pallette to the maximum.
Of course Philip Glass is a minimalist composer par excellence and he has written some of the most notable minimalist scores, including his very famous Koyanisqqatsi (although nothing from that score features here). Anthem Part 2 from Powaqqatsi is a marvellous choral/orchestral effort with some gorgeous harmonic progressions and was one of the most notable cues in the film, as I recall. The Beginning from Anima Mundi is a much more ethnic based cue, featuring a background of tribal drums, digaradoo effects, some synth effects and the occasional incredible vocal effect. Living Waters from the same score is a lot more subdued, but no less impressive. Of Glass' original contributions to the film, Truman Sleeps is a definite highlight, this is much more in the vein of Dallwitz's contributions, featuring a gorgeous piano style... somewhat reminiscent of Beethoven perhaps. This is actually performed onscreen by Glass himself, just have to look out carefully! The other miscellaneous tracks, such as the Chopin and Kilar tracks don't really mesh terribly well with the rest of the score's texture. Surprisingly, the other cues do blend pretty well and while lacking strong themes on their own, make strong enough statements, while having the same minimalistic tendacies to blend reasonably well together.
This is a somewhat unique score, almost like hearing the temp track in a lot of ways, but evidently they wanted the cues they picked by other composers or, rather unlikely I would suggest, Dallwitz's music just wasn't exactly what they were looking for. Much though I liked hearing all the Glass cues (it makes for a good, yet brief sampling of his work), I think that Dallwitz would have written an excellent entire score. Even those who aren't terribly fond of more minimalist music will delight in most of the selections since the endless variation of the musical loops are fascinating and some of the orchestration is experimental, but without just sounding desperate for something new.
Rating ~ 
Total Time ~ 56:44