Director Julian Jarrold's All the King's Men is one of two recent
BBC television films, the other being Warriors, commemorating a century
of warfare. Based on the true story of a British regiment lost in Turkey
in the Great War, the drama comes with suggestions of possible divine
intervention, atmospheric photography, a parched, timeless landscape, and
flashback narrative structure, inviting comparisons with two films by the
Australian director Peter Weir: Picnic at Hanging Rock and
Gallipoli. This is not in the class of the former, and being a television
production inevitably lacks the scale of the latter, but it is a powerful
and moving, if at times laboured, study of the consequences and denials of
war.
Adrian Johnston, who scored Jude, Our Mutual Friend and Shooting
the Past, has crafted a score which is by turns delicately atmospheric,
foreboding, eloquently elegiac, and intensely moving. His themes are deeply
melodic, at times unbearably intense with a near Elgarian quality.
Just as did The Deerhunter, the film spends a long time at home with
the soldiers, introducing them to us before they go to war. The first 11
of the 26 tracks depict life on the Sandringham estate in 1915, which was
something of a romantic rural idyll if this version of history is to be believed.
Unfortunately, the problems begin just 36 seconds into the album. 'The Legend'
is a dreamlike theme for strings and harp, utterly ruined by being senselessly
covered with a monologue from near the end of the film. So it goes, 'The
prelude' is another piece of brooding atmospheres, destroyed by breathing
sounds, then a gunshot and a horse bolting. In total half the tracks on the
disc suffer to a greater or lesser extend from the inclusion either of monologues
or sound effects. They never add anything, and in places detract to the point
of making the music unlistenable.
There may just possibly have been a place for this kind of 'aural film souvenir',
in the days before video. Now, if anyone wants to hear the music again in
its original context, all they have to do is play the videotape again. Surely
people buy soundtrack albums because they want to hear the music away
from the film, as a separate entity. What makes this example particularly
bad is that there is no warning on the cover that this is not a conventional,
music only OST. Customers have a right to know what they are buying, and
from the presentation, that would appear to be a perfectly normal soundtrack
album. What is yet more irritating is the arbitrary nature of the placement
of effects and dialogue: why just these effects, why not more, or less? Why
not more, or less speech? Why, if this approach is to be taken, not simply
release the soundtrack exactly as it appears with the film? Strangest of
all, the album has been produced by the composer, as if Adrian Johnston felt
that his own music was not sufficiently interesting to survive without being
'spiced-up'.
Given this presentation, it is often difficult to enjoy the score. However,
there is some fine music. 'Paradise' shimmers like a jewel, 'Norfolk' evokes
the endless melancholy at the heart of the English pastoral tradition, while
the rising string theme which marks moments of intense drama, and is first
heard in 'Farewell', has a majestic gravity which makes one wish Adrian Johnston
could be allowed to re-score Titanic.
So, a excellent score, seriously damaged by its own composer for the transfer
to disc. It is probably too much to hope that this CD will be withdrawn and
a proper soundtrack album issued instead, but in this form, outstanding as
the score is I can really only recommend it if you should find a copy at
budget price.
Reviewer
Gary S. Dalkin
Score
Presentation on this album
soundtrack to the
BBC television film. The BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by Terry Davies
