MOVIE MUSIC UK

Original Review by Jonathan Broxton

Kensuke’s Kingdom is a British animated film adapted from the acclaimed 1999 novel by Sir Michael Morpurgo. The story follows a young boy named Michael; after his father loses his job, Michael’s parents decide to sell up and sail around the world on their yacht, the Peggy Sue, bringing Michael and his dog Stella Artois along on the adventure. However, during a storm, Michael and Stella Artois are washed overboard and end up on a small, seemingly deserted island. Michael soon discovers the island is inhabited by Kensuke, an elderly Japanese man who has been living there since World War II. Initially, Kensuke is hostile and forbids Michael from signaling for help. Over time, however, they form a close bond, and Kensuke teaches Michael survival skills and shares his story of being separated from his family during the war, while they await a rescue. Aaron MacGregor, Sally Hawkins, Cillian Murphy, Ken Watanabe, and Raffey Cassidy lead the voice cast, and the film is directed by Neil Boyle and Kirk Hendry from a screenplay by Frank Cottrell-Boyce.

The score for Kensuke’s Kingdom is by British composer Stuart Hancock; in my opinion he is a composer who should have a much higher profile in the film music world than he does. Most of my exposure to his music has been as a direct result of soundtracks released on the Moviescore Media label, including the action thriller Underground in 2007, the action thriller Bodyguard: A New Beginning in 2008, and the Welsh fantasy short film Hawk in 2011, as well as his work on the BBC fantasy TV series Atlantis in 2015. Hancock is an old-fashioned large-scale orchestral composer, and Kensuke’s Kingdom is very much written in that vein.

In the album’s promotional material Hancock states: “Scoring Kensuke’s Kingdom was a joy for me: it’s an exquisite, hand-drawn animation in the best tradition, and my task was to create a symphonic score, strong on thematic material and structured to complement what is at heart a gentle film, but one also filled with wonder, adventure, human connection and heartbreak. Kensuke’s Kingdom has very little dialogue – a gift for a composer! The two lead characters cannot speak each other’s language, so the music has space to flourish and help tell their story. I composed initial character themes and sketches, working closely with the directors from the storyboard/animatic stage onwards. I honed the music as the animation gradually fell into place, culminating in fantastic recording sessions with full symphony orchestra, choir and solo musicians in late 2022. Personal highlights included recording Ken Watanabe’s singing (remotely from Tokyo) and having author Michael Morpurgo’s glowing seal of approval at regular intervals! I loved being part of the passionate team that worked for so many years to make Kensuke’s Kingdom a reality. I’m thrilled to have this soundtrack out in the world now, and for the movie itself to be at the beginning of its theatrical journey.”

The score really is quite outstanding, one of the most unexpectedly excellent surprises of the year to date. It was recorded in Slovakia with the Bratislava Symphony Orchestra, and is awash in grand gestures, moments of bold and sweeping adventure, and memorable soaring themes, but these are tempered with some other moments of tender intimacy which speak to the warm relationship that gradually develops between Michael and Kensuke. As Hancock noted, some of the cues also feature vocal performances by Ken Watanabe as Kensuke, wordless vocalizations that have a primal, yet comforting feel. Tonally it has a broad symphonic sound that is clearly intended to inhabit a world similar to the work of legends like John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, Bruce Broughton, and others; in fact, in places, I wondered whether the film had been temp-tracked with John Williams’s score for another big screen Michael Morpurgo adaptation, War Horse. This is not to say that the score is pastiche or anything negative; more, it is simply to illustrate what kind of sound a listener can expect as the score unfolds.

Several cues stood out to me as being worthy of special praise. The opening cue, “The Peggy Sue,” has a grand sense of adventure and optimism, a terrific central theme for the full orchestra, and a distinct nautical flavor which gives it a unique feel; the central theme reoccurs several times throughout the score, including in the slightly more introspective “Missing Stella,” the buoyant and exuberant “Travelogue,” and in a more sensitive and sentimental fashion at the beginning of “The Hunt, Part 1,” and then later in “Shattered Kingdom”. All this gives the score a clear thematic identity that has a satisfying sense of itself, and what it is all about; I love all the little intricate details that Hancock surrounds the theme with; some of the woodwind textures and phrasing of the brass, again, sound like the superb flourishes that Bruce Broughton brought to his 80s children’s adventure scores, especially things like The Boy Who Could Fly.

There is a sense of magic and wonderment in the lilting strings and chimes at the end of the lovely “Biscuits and Stars,” and a gorgeous sense of warmth and friendship in “A Deal with Becky,” and this continues on later in beautiful tracks like “Kensuke’s Home,” “Finding the Logbook,” and “Kensuke and Michael,” which underscore the beginnings of the unlikely friendship between the pair. I really enjoyed how Hancock was able to bring some very subtle elements of traditional Japanese music into the score here, especially in tracks like “Into the Jungle” and “New Family,” from the increased use of Japanese flutes and percussion items like the koto, to the aforementioned vocalizations by Watanabe.

The score has several frenetic and exciting action cues too, each full of striking complicated string work, darting woodwind textures, and occasional explosions of brassy intensity that sometimes become impressively dissonant. I especially appreciated the way “Man Overboard!” shifts its emotional focus, the clear sense of peril and danger in “Storm,” and the expressiveness of the orchestra in the exciting and engaging three-parter “The Hunt,” which takes elements from the main theme, the vocalizations by Watanabe, and some of the action writing from elsewhere in the score, and blends them together to create something quite special.

There are also some highly effective moments of suspense and drama that accompany Michael’s first nights on the island, from the eerie choral sounds in “Tide Coming In,” to the abstract and unnerving low woodwind and shrill string writing in “Exploring,” the initial shock of “Kensuke Appears,” and the vivid terror of “Jellyfish”. Perhaps the most effective cue in this vein is the astonishing “Nagasaki” cue, which begins with a solo child singing in Japanese, but grows to encompass a full and vigorous choir, and comes across as sort of child-like elegy depicting the horror of the atomic bombs that dropped on the city in 1945 from the innocent point of view of someone who has no understanding of what is happening and why.

The finale of the score begins with the unusual but deeply emotional “Healing,” in which Hancock takes the three-note motif that seems to represent Kensuke’s past, and has it performed both by Watanabe as an adult, and by an unnamed child, as if one is talking to the other, allowing the adult Kensuke to finally lay his fears and his haunted past to rest. The second half of the cue is light, airy, almost celebratory, and brings back the main theme in a magical way, especially when Hancock duets it against a beautiful solo violin. “Sayonara” is warm and noble, with some terrific writing for strings and horns, and then the conclusive cue “Kensuke’s Kingdom (End Titles Suite)” is a gorgeous summation of everything the score has to offer. The focus, as one would expect, is on the main theme, and here Hancock really allows it to soar in all the best ways.

Kensuke’s Kingdom is a superb score, a clear contender for animation-specific music awards, and one of the most unexpected delights of 2024 to date. Fans of the broad, emotional, thematic, intricate orchestral writing that typified the work of John Williams and Bruce Broughton in the 1980s will immediately be drawn to what Stuart Hancock achieved here; as I am one of those people, I loved it from start to finish. The score is available to purchase and download from the Moviescore Media website now, and a CD-on-demand release is coming out in August.

Buy the Kensuke’s Kingdom soundtrack from the Movie Music UK Store

Track Listing:

• The Peggy Sue (1:56)
• Missing Stella (1:46)
• Biscuits and Stars (2:10)
• A Deal with Becky (1:35)
• Man Overboard! (2:07)
• Travelogue (1:50)
• Storm (2:32)
• Tide Coming In (3:20)
• Exploring (1:44)
• Michael Defeated (0:46)
• Food! (1:30)
• A Cry for Help (0:58)
• Making Fire (0:57)
• Kensuke Appears (1:38)
• Jellyfish (1:52)
• Caring Kensuke (1:12)
• Kensuke’s Home (1:44)
• Finding the Logbook (1:26)
• Into the Jungle (5:07)
• Nagasaki (3:14)
• Kensuke and Michael (3:21)
• New Family (2:58)
• The Hunt: Part 1 (2:58)
• The Hunt: Part 2 (2:26)
• The Hunt: Part 3 (2:01)
• Shattered Kingdom (3:07)
• Starting Again (1:42)
• Healing (4:04)
• Over the Horizon (1:18)
• Sayonara (4:55)
• Kensuke’s Kingdom (End Titles Suite) (5:40)

Moviescore Media MMS24031 (2024)

Running Time: 73 minutes 54 seconds

Music composed by Stuart Hancock. Conducted by David Hernando Rico. Performed by the Bratislava Symphony Orchestra and the Holst Singers. Orchestrations by Stuart Hancock. Recorded and mixed by Martin Roller and Adam Smyth. Edited by Stuart Hancock. Album produced by Stuart Hancock and Mikael Carlsson.