While a lot of the music-loving world still adheres to the
idea that Yoko Ono cost us one of the greatest bands to ever touch an
instrument, I subscribe to a similar but far less recognised notion. Namely,
that Madonna cost the art of cinema one of its potential legendary filmmakers.
Guy Ritchie, as has been discussed on this blog before, was responsible for one
of my all-time favourite films with Snatch. After that feature, and hooking up
with Madonna, Ritchie took one of the biggest stumbles of any filmmaker still
working today.
Between the star-vehicle-cum-wrong-headed remake of an Italian
classic with Swept Away, to the equally wrong-headed attempt to merge Ritchie’s
British crime sensibilities with the teachings of Kabbalah with Revolver, the
man found prominence in Hollywood from then on but he never managed to
recapture that flame he once had. However, even considering the story we have
today, it seems that he has indeed gotten back to his roots… in the single
weirdest way possible. Let’s get started with today’s film and I’ll explain
how.
The plot: Arthur (Charlie Hunnam), a street-wise urchin on
the streets of Londinium, operates his small criminal operation amidst rumours
of the “Borne King”, the true heir to the throne that can take power away from
the evil wizard Vortigern (Jude Law). As the past king Uther Pendragon (Eric
Bana)’s sword Excalibur resurfaces, and Arthur manages to pull it from its
stone, Arthur finds himself embroiled in a battle against Vortigern’s tyranny and
restore order to the kingdom.
The cast here is decent, but honestly not that special. Hunnam,
for the version of Arthur he’s been given, does admirably with the material and
embodies the kind of hard-nosed and gruff thuggish Brit that Ritchie once made
his mark with back in the day. Aidan Gillen, in an against-type protagonist
role, manages to fit his usual slimy and roguish mannerisms into the
performance without it feeling beyond his station. Neil Maskell and Kingsley Ben-Adir
as Arthur’s long-time allies work very well in their scenes with Hunnam, giving
us a glimpse of a completely different (and potentially better) film underneath
the Arthurian polish.
Law only really gives a quantifiable performance in the
scenes where he pays tribute to the Syrens, being rather bland as a main
villain otherwise, and Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey as The Mage is quite horrendous,
to be brutally honest, giving an incredibly stiff and abrasive performance that
legitimately brings joy whenever a scene occurs without her in it. Knowing
Ritchie’s less-than-feminist stylings, this might
have been an intentional move (making the only female character in the main
cast the least engaging to watch) but regardless, she is the black spot on an
otherwise just okay cast list.
This film plays out far more like a traditional British
gangster flick rather than anything to do with knights and sorcery, largely
embodied through Arthur’s criminal dealings and the rapid-fire slang-heavy
snarking that goes on between him and pretty much anyone else in earshot. I
have no real issue with this, as playful anachronisms can make for rather
entertaining cinema (e.g. A Knight’s Tale) but it feels way too disjointed here
to reach that goal.
For one, the film seems far more willing to delve into the
criminal and ‘rebelling against the false ruler’ aspects than the Arthurian
legend itself, making the scenes that actually do pertain to it feel out-of-place even though they are supposed to
be the main crux of the story. For another, even the characters seem to want
nothing to do with the story of King Arthur, with Arthur himself spending most
of the film trying his best to avoid joining the resistance and generally
avoiding anything to do directly with Vortigern.
It probably doesn’t help that, whether Ritchie and co.
actively wanted to do a story about King Arthur or not, both sides of the story
are handled rather poorly. The street dealings are largely shown through
montage, including the majority of Arthur’s upbringing that could have filled
up a decent amount of the film on its own, and exceptionally shoddy montage at
that. Along with being one of the bigger signifiers of the anachronisms at
work, editor James Herbert saw fit to arrange the individual shots in the most
disorienting way possible.
This ends up being something carried over in the
Arthurian sections, with Arthur’s baptism of fire in the Blacklands being
arranged out of order for no real reason other than to appeal to Ritchie’s
non-continuity style of storytelling. Except here, because events are either
purposely placed in a jumbled order or key events keep being shown over and
over again, just with new bits added to them each time, it serves less as a
showing of the filmmakers’ skill and more just a test of the audience’s
patience. Arthur is shown complaining about a headache during one of the
montages, and quite frankly, I don’t bloody blame him.
Probably the biggest showing of Ritchie’s reluctance with
the material is that, when it comes to detailing the Arthurian world of might
and magic, he seems to assume an awful lot of the audience. I say that because
many of the aspects of this world from the use of magic to the sword to the
creatures we see like the Syrens, all of whom apparently have concrete rules to
their respective existences, are barely touched upon and just end up furthering
the feeling of dissonance that the dialogue and editing is already drilling
into the heads of the audience.
This isn’t aided by the aspects of filmmaking
that are specifically designed to adhere to the Arthurian story, namely the
production design and the soundtrack. Now, the production design is okay for a
medieval setting but the very drab colour palette makes it hard to really
appreciate, not helped by how it just feels like a stone-built façade to cover
up the crime drama just under the surface.
The music, on the other hand, starts
out well enough with its very rustic instrumentation that helps set the scene
better than the actual scenery at times. However, once we get into the
breathing that gets used as its own instrument in the compositions, things get
really annoying really bloody quickly. It’s like composer Daniel Pemberton just
heard Kanye West’s Black Skinhead for the first time and wanted to make a
sound-alike, only overdoing it on the vocal additions to the point of eventual
madness. Coming from the guy who gave us the incredibly well-structured score
for Steve Jobs, I frankly expected better.
All in all, while definitely a better attempt to merge Guy
Ritchie’s Brit-hard mannerisms with a different kind of story than what he’s
done in the past (looking at you, Revolver), it still isn’t all that good. The
gangster and would-be king halves of the story, even for a potentially
intentional anachronistic aesthetic, do not mesh well together and neither side
is done that good on their own to begin with. Add to that a rather basic cast,
a script that doesn’t seem to know what it’s doing and a soundtrack that gets
old in record time, and you have the kind of film that I unfortunately have
come to expect from Guy Ritchie nowadays. And to make matters worse,
considering Ritchie is attached to the upcoming live-action remake of Disney’s
Aladdin, chances are that I’ll be repeating a lot of these issues all over
again before too long.
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