King Arthur - Legend Of The Sword

A Mage A Day Helps
You Work, Rest and Play

King Arthur - Legend Of The Sword
USA 2017 Directed by Guy Ritchie
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Any similarities between this movie and the legend of King Arthur are purely coincidental.

Remember that famous moment in Arthurian legend where giant, armoured elephants taller than a couple of skyscrapers attack Camelot with giant, spiky clubs they hold in their trunks? Yeah, me neither. Yet... here they are.

I’m not a fan of gangster cinema but the few films by Guy Ritchie I’ve actually seen - the two Sherlock Holmes films and The Man From UNCLE reboot (reviewed here)- were pretty cool movies, as far as I’m concerned. However, when I saw a trailer for King Arthur - Legend of the Sword a month or so ago it looked absolutely horrendous and I made a decision, there and then, to trust my instincts and stay away from the movie. However, I then found out that Daniel Pemberton was re-teaming with Ritchie after his fantastic score for The Man From UNCLE and, furthermore, while King Arthur - Legend of the Sword was taking a critical drubbing, Pemberton’s score was being singled out as the best thing about the movie and was doing very well in the Amazon music charts (and not just the soundtrack part of it). Since I also knew there was already a CD release of this score... well, I had to go and see this after all. And, I must say, as far as Pemberton’s score goes, at least... I wasn’t disappointed.

To be fair to Ritchie and his excellent cast and crew... the trailer for the film makes it look much less appetizing than it actually is. King Arthur - Legend of the Sword is actually a huge slice of fun and its greatest tragedy, in my eyes, is that it looks like it had a truly great movie waiting in the wings in some alternate cut. However, it’s not without its huge problems and I think the final edit probably hinders the movie way more than it should.

The great thing about this film, the primary strength, is its cast. They’re all very good. Charlie Hunnam is very likable as Arthur, Jude Law makes an excellent villain in King Vortigern, Eric Bana is excellent as Uther Pendragon (for the few minutes he’s in it), British treasure Neil Maskell is wonderful as the likeable guy who ends up as motivation fodder at a critical point in the story and the Merlin substitute, played here as a female mage by Astrid Bergès-Frisbey, who I last saw in the unbelievably cool I Origins (reviewed here) has absolutely the most amazing screen presence in this film. Even Mr. Posh Spice gets a halfway decent moment in the proceedings.

The dialogue isn’t bad either and the opening ten minutes, pre-credits, and the credits themselves are very strong sequences. Pre-credits is the big ‘elephant’ scene I mentioned above, as Uther saves everybody from the evil attacking Camelot before heading to meet his own fate in the betrayal of a close friend and the titles themselves play out over Arthur growing up in a brothel and becoming ‘street savvy’ in Londinium. Unfortunately, this is all the strongest stuff in the movie and, as much as I admired Ritchie’s technique and the way in which he uses the syntax of splicing film to create a finished result, I really think it goes into overdrive too quickly and too long here.

Oh, and the music... as I said before, Daniel Pemberton’s score is absolutely top notch and I expect to see it listed in my top five scores at the end of the year. Truly astonishing work and this guy is definitely one to watch. I’ll probably never watch this movie again in my life but the CD soundtrack is going to be on my turntable for months, when it arrives, I’m pretty sure of that.

So, okay... lets talk about the two things I think let the film down a little.

This doesn’t stick to Arthurian legend at all. There’s no Merlin or Morgan Le Fey... although I’m sure that in the subsequent films that Ritchie was planning on releasing before this flopped big time at the box office, Astrid Bergès-Frisbey’s unnamed mage character would have taken on one of those two mantles. There’s no Guinevere, no Lancelot and other bits of legend are played with fairly hard so they almost become unrecognisable. Also, this is set in a time, according to the script, when magicians were plentiful and roamed side-by-side with normal people... so we have, to an extent, fantastical elements not uncommon in something you might expect in the heroic fantasy genre. That being said, I’ve no idea why giant snakes were so prominent unless Ritchie loved the John Milius version of Conan The Barbarian as much as I did because some of the magical sequences seem to be a little at odds with common sense or follow through here.

Another main difference is that King Arthur, once he’s learned how to wield Excalibur without fainting and lapsing into unconsciousness, can do magic stuff himself... drawing on power from his sword in a similar manner to the way Michael Moorcock’s famous character Elric Of Melnibone gains power from his black, soul sucking sword Stormbringer. So, you know... big changes to Arthurian legend there. Alfred Tennyson might be twirling poetically in his grave at this point.

The other thing is Ritchie’s cinematic language here. Remember those scenes in Soderbergh’s The Limey where he cuts between two different scenes of the same two people to make up one conversation? Well Ritchie does it all the time and while I have observed this trait in him before and while he always, here included, does it very well... using short edits of alternate situations and also just generally cross-cutting between scenes to tell the story... here he seems to be doing it without any thought as to how the abundance of such an approach affects the whole piece. Like he and the editor were on some kind of really wonderful drug while cutting this movie and... it works great as a means to an end but I wish he’d have tempered it back because, honestly, it really gets tiring after just five minutes, let alone a whole movie's worth of fast cutting. Seriously, was there any shot in this film held for more than a few seconds? This really is MTV generation editing taken to a point way farther than it maybe should have been allowed to get.

You need some pauses...

If you look at some of the most iconic action movies of all time coming from the likes of Akira Kurosawa or Sergio Leone or even Steven Spielberg, one of the things you’ll notice straight away after you’ve seen just a few is that they are all about the pausing and build up between action sequences. You make the action moments stand out by pitching them against something which anticipates and teases those sequences. In this film, however, even the long dialogue scenes, of which there are many, are cut together like hard hitting action scenes so, when the three or four action sequences do come along, quite apart from being hard to follow, they are diluted and lose literally all impact because they have nothing to be seen in contrast to. Now it’s obvious from this that Ritchie has the coverage on the various scenes because he keeps cutting back to them.... so I wish he’d have just ramped down from the ferocious editing in some of those sequences a little more and let them play out without chopping about so much because, overall, the film gradually wears you down to a point where the final battles feel like a complete anticlimax and you really do feel like the movie just needs to end soon, to be honest.

And it’s such a shame because Ritchie is so obviously a great director and I wish he would have just reeled himself in a bit because I’m sure, with the footage he already has, this could have been a truly groovy and successful movie. However, it isn’t... the people have spoken with their wallets and, alas, it’s time to move on from this somewhat unique take on King Arthur and his Merry Men. No wait, that’s not right. Although it does seem like the film is trying to be more Robin Hood with magic party tricks and less King Arthur at some points.

So... you know what. If you’ve got nothing better to do one evening, I’d still say go and have a look at King Arthur - Legend Of The Sword because, frankly, you can learn from and be somewhat entertained by a spectacular failure as you can from a film which totally gets everything right. It’s not a great film but it’s not without its moments and, over and above all the mess that this movie is, it’s still got some kick ass, killer music by Pemberton which is really worth the price of admission. The movie is a bit of a write off, to be sure but... there are things work salvaging from the wreckage if you feel you’ve got the time.

I Origins

Soul Survivor

I Origins
2014  USA
Directed by Mike Cahill
UK cinema release print.

Warning: There are going to have to be some slight spoilers in this review to be able to discuss it a little but, I promise I’ll try not to tell you anything you wouldn’t already pick up from the trailer.

Wow.

Just that. Wow.

It’s always been my belief that some of the best films made every year are held back in the UK until an Autumn release. Once the big summer blockbuster movies have done the rounds and won’t eat up (or be challenged) by the smaller fish in the pond. This film right here validates that theory nicely.

I’ve not yet seen this director’s previous movie, Another Earth, although I really wanted to. It unfortunately disappeared from cinemas way too quickly for me to get the chance to go and have a look at it and so I was very conscious of the fact that I wanted to see this one before it hastily exits our screens in a similar fashion. And you can bet, after having seen this one, that I’ll be getting to Another Earth at some point very soon.

I Origins is a story about a molecular biologist called Ian, played by Michael Pitt, who has a passion for eyes. It starts off as a love story but takes you somewhere completely different. After a highly charged but failed sexual encounter with a girl at a Halloween party wearing a Diabolik mask, he is haunted by her and fails to notice his new lab assistant who is having brilliant research ideas that will change their lives forever. He has a very rigid and fixed set of scientific values, just like the new lab assistant Karen, played by Brit Marling (who was so good in The East, reviewed here). However, Ian is one of those people who has a strong link with unexplained phenomena/coincidence and he starts to notice the number 11 following him around (I’ve had similar issues at a certain point in my life but I’m not going to go into that right here).

The number 11 leads him to a giant billboard with the same eyes as the girl from the Halloween party (he took some high res photos of her eyes at the time) and eventually he tracks down the girl, called Sofi, as played by Astrid Bergès-Frisbey. Thus begins a love story that, as the trailer suggests, is destined to end in tragedy. I’m not going to tell you how Sofi dies because that’s not revealed in the marketing but... lets just say that it’s a particularly nasty kind of death and is the kind of incident you would normally expect to see in a horror film. Ian’s screams as he realises his soon-to-be-wife has died are such a painful ending to that particular scene that the director even dials back the sound after a little while, so we don’t have to hear Ian’s pain, and lets the visuals do all the work here.

Actually, and I know this is unusual for me people but, please, cut me some slack here... I can’t say too much about the cinematography and editing of this particular film because I was so immersed in the experience of discovering each twist and turn of the story. The performances by all the actors are so good that their characters come alive for you in a very real and identifiable way, it has to be said.

After the death of Sofi we then start the second phase of the film and a new romance enters Ian’s life. Then, we get to the third level of the film and it’s seven years down the line. Ian and his lab partner have made their important discovery and showed it to the world. Their research into eye patterns has made them world famous and financially buoyant. Ian’s wife gives birth to their son but, a number of months later, a research scientist calls up Ian to ask for permission to do some tests on his son under the pretence of looking for autism. When Ian and his wife walk out on the tests with their son due to the distressing nature of some of it... after a while, they get to thinking what was really behind them being contacted for their son’s test. With the help of their friend they find that their son’s eyes made him a candidate for a very special kind of experiment, one which they attempt to recreate themselves, in a series of almost scientifically impossible connections which take Ian to India to find the owner of the same pair of eyes as his previous dead lover.

I don’t want to be much more specific than that because that’s as much as you’ll get from the trailer, but the gradual road of discovery and the belief in the old saying that the eyes are the windows of the soul is very much the relevant point here. It’s a science fiction idea but it’s put together so cunningly and soundly that I can almost guarantee you’ll be absolutely riveted to your seat. It’s basically a love story and it challenges the notion of scientific analysis with the belief in a higher design without really cracking into either one as a concluding belief. Don’t get me wrong, the final shots of the movie do give a sense of closure to the questions raised throughout the course of the movie and leave me in no doubt as to what the writer/director’s final conclusion is... but I’ve never been one to believe that hard science and the realm of mystical thought in any way cancel each other out. I think they both just validate the same phenomena from different angles... although I have to confess I hate the idea of organised religion.

There’s a point in the movie where a woman tells Ian about a question once put to the Dalai Lama by a scientist. He was asked what he would feel about his religion if he was presented with absolute scientific proof that made him question his religious views. The answer was that he would study the evidence and, if necessary, he would change his views. She then asks Ian, our main male protagonist, what he would do if he was given a proof that made him question his rational belief in the scientific world as he understasnds it and I think this question nicely sums up the two opposing states at work throughout this movie. It’s a fascinating study of these kinds of questions/dilemmas and it’s shot and scored in a way that is compelling and moving.

That score, by the way, is by Will Bates and Phil Mossman and if I had to try and describe it I’d have to say that it’s a little like something Vangelis might have scored it with, but run through a minimalist, sensibility. Minimalistic like Eric Satie trying to find his way to Philip Glass while being bolstered with, almost throwaway, musical and ambient textures to pick out and highlight stretches and catch the ears at an appropriate moment. Very nice and the CD, which I’m surprised has even got a release for a film like this, is already out... so I’m looking forward to wrapping my ears around that one sometime soon.

This movie is an easy recommend for me. Anybody who’s into movies should love it. For me it’s right up there with this years best movies like The Grand Budapest Hotel, Only Lovers Left Alive and Under The Skin. A real gem of a movie and I absolutely love the fact that I hated the title so much but adored the movie. I will be picking this one up on blu ray as soon as it gets a release.