by Jenny Nelson
True Grit (2010)
Hail, Caesar! (2016)
Suggested Playlist
Raising Arizona, Way Out There (Main Title)
Miller’s Crossing, End Titles
Fargo, Fargo, North Dakota
Fargo, Safe Keeping
The Big Lebowski, Wie Glauben
The Man Who Wasn’t There, The Trial of Ed Crane
Intolerable Cruelty, Intolerable Mambo
No Country for Old Men, Blood Trails
Burn After Reading, Night Running
A Serious Man, A Serious Man
A Serious Man, The Roof
True Grit, The Wicked Flee
True Grit, Ride to Death
Hail, Caesar!, 5 a.m.
Hail, Caesar!, Hail, Caesar!
* The 1998 tale of mistaken identity, bowling and, yes, kidnap again, was not a commercial success but has since garnered such a wide fanbase that there’s an annual festival in its honour and a religion, Dudeism, based on the philosophy and lifestyle of the lead character, Jeffrey Lebowski.
Spanning Shakespeare and superheroes, Patrick Doyle and Kenneth Branagh have worked together on twelve films, from Henry V in 1989 to Murder on the Orient Express in 2017. While adaptations of the Bard’s works might seem to dominate the list, the variety of musical styles and film genres covered – the romantic Cinderella (2015), the unsettling Sleuth (2007) and the action-packed Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014) – remind us that this is a versatile partnership, as well as a successful one.
Their success can be attributed to talent, of course, but also to a firm and loyal friendship that has strengthened over the decades. As Doyle has said, ‘We get on terribly well. He’s a very funny person, very witty. He’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met and has a great instinct for music and drama. He allows me to have lots of artistic leeway but the whole experience is hugely enjoyable. We have an instinctive rapport, there’s a symbiosis there which either you have with a director or you don’t.’
Their collaboration stands apart from others in this book because the director may actually be better known to many for his acting work on stage and screen. Branagh’s directing skills are just a part of his varied career and he is the first person to have received Academy Award nominations in five different categories: Best Director (Henry V), Best Actor (Henry V), Best Live Action Short Film (Swan Song), Best Adapted Screenplay (Hamlet) and Best Supporting Actor (My Week with Marilyn). Meanwhile, Doyle has had cameo roles in seven of Branagh’s films, so both have experience in front of the camera as well as behind the scenes.
The director has an eye and an ear for a good story, which Doyle acknowledges: ‘I’ve been very fortunate that his choices have been very astute, very classy.’ Still, as he explains, ‘every film’s difficult . . . You’ve got to deliver the best work you possibly can, and it has to be of a very high standard. I put my heart and soul into it. But there’s no special dispensation for a pal.’
Belfast-born Kenneth Branagh attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and, at twenty-three years old, was the youngest ever actor to play Henry V in a Royal Shakespeare Company production. He co-founded the Renaissance Theatre Company with David Parfitt in 1987, and their third production, after Romeo and Juliet and a one-man show with John Sessions called Life of Napoleon, was a staging of Twelfth Night at Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, featuring an original score by the actor, composer and musician Patrick Doyle.
Doyle, from South Lanarkshire, had studied piano and singing at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, and after meeting Kenneth and joining the team for Twelfth Night, they hit the road: ‘We did a national tour with Judi Dench, Derek Jacobi and Geraldine McEwan directing. Three plays: As You Like It, Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing. I was employed as a musical director. I played small parts in it, but really my job was as composer and music director. As it was a rep company, the fact I could do a bit of acting was all to the good! At the end of that tour, the Renaissance Film Company was then established, and I went on to do Henry V.’
The tour not only established long-lasting partnerships between Branagh and the other actors – he directed Dench and Jacobi as recently as 2017 in Murder on the Orient Express – but also laid the foundations for a solid working relationship between him and Doyle. ‘He certainly became aware of my musical facility for melody,’ recalled the composer. ‘The fact that I could work fast also really appealed to him. So that helped to cement our relationship.’ Doyle has spoken in interviews about the significance he places on the narrative and characters within the films he scores, and his early career as an actor may have influenced this approach. He watches film rushes with an acute eye, looking to ascertain whether music is required to elevate a scene or an actor’s portrayal. The composer’s preparation involves spending some time with the cast, which is vital for Branagh: ‘He knows that performances are so key to me, that he wants to get a sense of who they are and how they speak about their characters.’
Henry V, their first feature film collaboration, was also Doyle’s first movie and he had a small role as Court, a soldier in Henry’s army. He is the first to start singing the film’s stand-out piece of music, ‘Non Nobis, Domine’, during a long, sweeping shot as the camera follows Branagh carrying the body of Robin, played by a young Christian Bale, through the battlefield. It’s a significant moment in the film and for Doyle’s career as a composer: he won the Ivor Novello Award for Best Film Theme.
The composer has cited Henry V as an example of how Branagh briefs him and communicates his creative objectives at the start of a project, recalling how the song came into being, nearly thirty years ago, as they sat in the dressing room of the Palace Theatre in Manchester: ‘He described this shot in detail, and that the music should build and build. His reference was – and this may seem odd – the Paul McCartney Frog Song [‘We All Stand Together’] . . . I thought of ‘Tomorrow Belongs to Me’ from Cabaret, that’s the way I saw it in my head, with that kind of growth in a musical track. So I went into the foyer of the theatre, and I wrote the tune. It took five minutes! I immediately wrote another tune because I thought, “That came out too quickly”, but . . . usually your first idea’s the strongest one. I went back to him after lunch and played it to him and he says, “The first one, that’s it, definitely.” And this piece has been my calling card for the rest of my film career!’
Branagh’s Henry V won universal acclaim for bringing his theatrical flair to the silver screen, and made the actor and director a household name. Still considered one of cinema’s finest Shakespeare adaptations, it received three Academy Award nominations, including Best Actor and Best Director, and won the Oscar for Best Costume Design.
For his next project, Branagh chose to direct a markedly different film, the Hitchcockian romantic neo-noir Dead Again (1991), in which he and his then-wife Emma Thompson played the lead roles. Doyle provided an appropriately thrilling and tense score, with stand-out cue ‘The Headlines’ serving up a bold concoction of strings, woodwind with sudden brass flourishes; he received a Golden Globe nomination for his work.
Patrick Doyle and Kenneth Branagh at the premiere of Cinderella in Los Angeles, 2015.
When asked about his composing methods, Doyle says, ‘I move fairly fast’, although he is more measured these days, allowing himself some time to digest the script and consider the film before starting to compose. ‘I tended to be more impatient when I was younger,’ he reflects, and credits those vital early discussions with Branagh for providing initial inspiration.
Being on location has its uses too, as was the case for their next collaboration, Much Ado About Nothing (1993), one of the most financially successful Shakespeare adaptations of all time. Branagh turned the witty play into a hugely entertaining film with a great cast including Denzel Washington and Michael Keaton. Doyle plays Balthazar, Don Pedro’s musician, and performed some of his own songs including ‘Sigh No More, Ladies’. He spent six weeks on the set in Tuscany, which had a big infl
uence on his subsequent score: ‘Strangely enough, the overture was written on the banks of the lake of Menteith, the only lake in Scotland, but all the inspiration was from my work in Italy.’
The pair are on the same page when it comes to the secrets of their collaborative success, as Branagh has said: ‘Because Pat and I are very good friends, have known each other a long time now, when I know that a movie may be on the horizon, I let him know very early on and he’s always keen to have an initial conversation, just to have a sense.’ Sometimes this can take place as far as eighteen months ahead of any recording stage, allowing ideas to settle and take shape in Doyle’s mind early on: ‘That’s the way we work together: the earlier the better, and then you become really embedded in the film with the director.’
Their next Shakespearian adaptation was the first unabridged screen version of Hamlet (1996). At over four hours it’s a lavish and ambitious visual feast, expertly carried by a superb cast including Julie Christie, Derek Jacobi, Kate Winslet and Branagh himself in the lead role. Hamlet received four Academy Award nominations, including Best Original Score for Patrick Doyle, his second nod after Sense and Sensibility the previous year.
Again, early conversations between the director and composer were crucial for the score: ‘I listen very closely to [Branagh’s] first impressions of what he wants, or his first instructions as to what he wants to achieve in the picture. If you listen very closely and read the script, then that in itself conjures up musical ideas.’ Speaking to Soundtrack! The Collector’s Quarterly in 1997, Doyle revealed that while he tended to work with a temp track of his own music to avoid the age-old problem of temp scores leading to imitation, he and Branagh had agreed for this project that whenever the composer watched footage, there should be no music to steer or influence him.
The director requested a strong main theme to portray the lead character, and Doyle composed three themes in total, for the characters of Ophelia, Claudius and Hamlet. He was inspired early on to include some chamber pieces: ‘The only device I thought I would use throughout the film is a quartet or a quintet that would suddenly be joined by the full orchestra . . . and then be left in isolation again and then joined.’
The scoring of the famous ‘To be or not to be’ scene was left until later, while they pondered whether or not it required music: ‘Apart from one cutaway it’s a long stationary shot. The music is there to make it more accessible to the audience and to keep the focus. I was trying to capture the essence of the scene, which deals with life and death itself and the age-old question of why we are here. I tried to give this feeling of antiquity, by having a chronological device of bringing in ancient instruments joined by modern instruments.’ The result is deliberately understated, adding tension to the hall of mirrors as the Prince of Denmark contemplates suicide, watched on the other side of the glass by his stepfather and uncle, Claudius.
The two Shakespeare films that followed were adventurous adaptations, in particular Love’s Labour’s Lost (2000) – the first time it had been made into a feature film. One of Shakespeare’s lesser-known comedies, it was a risky decision to turn it into an all-singing, all-dancing Hollywood musical. Unfortunately the risk did not pay off, as neither audiences nor critics could muster up much enthusiasm. Most of the music comes courtesy of early twentieth-century American composers including Cole Porter, Jerome Kern and George Gershwin, and it was Branagh’s idea to incorporate their songs within the body of the story. Doyle’s challenge was to compose an underscore that fitted neatly around the familiar numbers like ‘The Way You Look Tonight’ and ‘I Get a Kick Out of You’. His contributions have a characteristic vigour, such as ‘Victory’ with its triumphant brass, not dissimilar to his popular score for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire several years later.
As You Like It (2006) was a less daring proposition, despite also being relatively unfamiliar. This time the director chose to transport the drama to a late nineteenth-century colony in Japan. The location gave Doyle the opportunity to incorporate some Eastern sounds, including a Japanese stringed instrument called a koto, and the resulting score is superb. ‘Violin Romance’ is simply beautiful, and feels instantly familiar from the opening notes, whether or not you’ve seen the film. Doyle had another cameo role, performing his composition ‘Under the Greenwood Tree’, which beguiles the melancholy Jacques, played by Kevin Kline. In 2007, shortly after the release of the film, Doyle described the shoot: ‘It was quite a daunting first day. You arrive, you meet the actors, some of them for the first time, like Kevin Kline, and you immediately have to teach them this song on location. I then had to teach the entire staff of Wakehurst Place [in West Sussex, where most of the filming took place] the song . . . that’s the way it works with Ken, it’s like “shooting from the hip”, as they say, so it’s always great.’
Doyle smiles at the idea that any one of the Shakespeare adaptations might have been any easier than any other: ‘They’re all difficult! It doesn’t matter if it’s your good friend or it’s a director who you’ve never met before, you’re still required to compose the score. The fact that you may have a laugh together doesn’t preclude the serious work of actually delivering and coming up with the goods. Each film I do is difficult, and certainly not any less difficult working with Kenneth Branagh, especially working on a Shakespeare adaptation. I always feel a tremendous deference towards Shakespeare because he’s such a genius.’
The romance of As You Like It was stripped away for their next project, Sleuth (2007), a reinvention of the 1972 stage play in which two men spar for a woman’s love using tricks and mind games. Starring Michael Caine and Jude Law, this is a claustrophobic cat-and-mouse tale, and Doyle’s score is sparse and fascinating, a world away from his Shakespeare works. He has spoken in interviews about Gesamtkunstwerk, which translates as ‘total work of art’, and how all elements of the film-making process combine to complete the final product. This belief that each part of the process is as important as any other adds to his knack for getting under the skin of a narrative. He believes that the job of the composer ‘is to be another character and to weave yourself in and out of the drama, as another actor appearing on the screen would be’. On Sleuth, his subtle drums, elegant strings and chilling piano motif conjure an atmosphere of calculated distance as the drama unfolds.
Another bold choice came next: the announcement that Branagh would be entering the comic-book world of superheroes to direct Thor (2011) was a surprise to many. The fourth film in the Marvel cinematic universe, this was Branagh’s return to big-budget directing after the disappointment of Love’s Labour’s Lost, and while his involvement raised a few eyebrows, all’s well that ends well because it was a well-received critical and financial success.
The scale of the project required some adjustment for Doyle, but he felt his relationship with Branagh was strong enough to enable him to get some honest feedback from the director: ‘It was a challenging score because he and I were dealing with a huge franchise, and the production executives are much more involved in every single aspect of the process of film-making, so you can lose your direction because you’re dealing with a body of people, not just with the director . . . I remember calling him as a friend, not as a director, to say, “Look, I’m not sure, am I going in the right direction?” Looking back, it was just the pressure of the job. These action movies are enormous pressure for everyone, because they’ve got a huge worldwide exposure and lots of money invested in them. He was very reassuring . . . and a couple of days later, it was as if the call never took place.
‘That’s when you can rely on your friend, and be honest and say, “I’m not quite sure what’s going on here in my head.” You’re much more on your own when you’re dealing with these big massive productions because the director’s got so much more responsibility in other areas . . . it’s almost every man for himself!’
Doyle composed an intelligent score for a superhero blockbuster, opting for light and shade instead of an assault of crashing crescendos.
He shows he’s capable of large-scale majesty with ‘Thor Kills the Destroyer’ and offers heroism without the bombast in cues like ‘Chasing the Storm’. Making musical distinctions between Earth and Asgard, he used more contemporary sounds involving electronics and percussion for the former, while Thor’s realm was depicted by broader orchestral strokes. The love story between the eponymous hero and the Earth-dwelling Jane Foster is handled sensitively, and Doyle really gets the strings to sing in ‘Can You See Jane?’
Following Thor, Doyle scored other big-budget films including Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Brave, continuing to experiment with styles and broaden his palette. The Celtic influences of Brave, in particular, are a welcome reminder of his diverse skill set, complemented by earlier period pieces like Gosford Park. As with the other composers in this book, he has benefited from working with different directors in between projects with his main collaborator, including Brian De Palma (Carlito’s Way), Ang Lee (Sense and Sensibility), Alfonso Cuarón (Great Expectations), Robert Altman (Gosford Park) and Amma Asante (A United Kingdom). He puts this impressive roster down to personality: ‘I think I have the good fortune of being a bit of a chameleon. I like to connect with people and the essential thing is to listen very carefully and try to pick up all the signals of people’s artistic tastes. I think if your antenna is receptive to these things, you’re halfway there.’
Loyalty is another key factor in most successful collaborations, and Doyle clearly considers it to be a fundamental requirement. In terms of his relationship to the wider production and musical teams, Doyle is firm on where his loyalties lie: ‘My allegiance is always to the director. If there are any artistic differences or perceptions, then they have to deal with that amongst themselves; I deal with the director. It’s the most sensible way to work. That way, you’re only dealing with one person, and that person is the conduit with other people. Not all directors are obviously musical in the same way as you are, but they usually have a strong sense of what music does to their picture, and you have to instil confidence in them in your work. So you have to be quite bold and diplomatic.’
