Let’s start the new semester with a peek back to last semester’s English Majors’ Week!
The moderator of the Film Club screening, Bodnár Péter was joined by Molnár Gergely to have a conversation about the film and to try and save the King’s grace. Give it a listen! You can also read Péter’s thoughts on the film below.
Music to my Ears, My King
In the Film Club podcast on King Arthur – The Legend of the Sword I talked about some features of the aforementioned film with Gergely Molnár, some of which can be seen as a potential attempt of saving graces for the film. And the films seems to be highly in need of that, as the new King Arthur was not received with a critical appraisal. The film stands with a 29% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, which is less than graceful. On the other hand, the audience score is standing at a much stronger 69%, which might be thanks to the elements which we discussed in the podcast. One thing we highlighted that helped us enjoy the film more is the music. The melodies created by Daniel Pemberton helped deepen the immersion and he managed to create songs that not only supplement the scenes, but actually make them better. Although a lot of new films have a soundtrack which is quite good by today’s standards, it is not often that we have a soundtrack which saves the experience of a film that is otherwise far from perfect. The themes Pemberton created are so alluring and mesmerising, that they are stuck to my ears even to this day (which is – to be fair – a long time after the English Majors’ Week screening of the film, and even longer after I had first watched it). The tunes that leave this strong an impression usually belong to the titans of cinema soundtracks like John Williams, Howard Shore or Hans Zimmerman. If we take a look at Pemberton’s previous works, we can see that although he contributed to several good films, none of his works stood out as much as King Arthur.
When we look into the musical scores of the film, there are two pieces that stand out as the odd ones. Two songs that were not originally made by Pemberton. Both of them were, however, re-suited to the mood of the film, with which, once again, Pemberton worked wonders. One of them is Sam Lee’s “The Devil and the Huntsman,” which accompanied a long scene of the hero’s journey before the final battle. The scene was music video-like, and it felt more like the shots belonged to an overpriced video clip, rather than the music serving as a background. The other song is what originally was named “Lament – Light of Aidan” and its origins are clouded. One thing is for certain, “Light of Aidan” is owned by a companyfounded by Guy Ritchie, director of the film. He, alongside with Pemberton, decided to re-imagine the original, and name it “The Politics & The Life.” Not much has been changed compared to the original, only a lot more instruments got involved. What is special about this song for Hungarian viewers is that “Light of Aidan” was first used as a background music for a fan-made trailer of a video game, Halo ODST. All things considered, the music of King Arthur – Legend of the Sword might very well be its best feature, which leaves me sad, as a soundtrack as good as this could have reached greater heights with a better film.
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