Composer Christopher Benstead continues to live in the world of The Gentlemen. Director Guy Ritchie‘s go-to composer scored the film as well as the Netflix television series. Instead of retreading the past, Benstead explored a newer, classical direction with the gangster story.
Benstead went more choral, operatic, and sometimes, downright jokey with the hit show’s score. “In general, the tone of the series warranted something different,” Benstead told Immersive. It needed to be a bit more peppy and a bit more colorful, to some extent. In the film, there are quite a few more needle drops than in the TV series, so the music had to sort of fill that energy gap.”
Benstead’s scores are about as energetic as Ritchie’s signature dialogue. Recently, the composer told us all about how he approached scoring the show for the posh filmmaker.
[Note: This interview has been edited for clarity and length]
You and Guy Ritchie met on Aladdin. What was your first impression of him?
My first impression was knows what he wants and he is quite persistent until he gets what he wants. He’s a free-thinker. He definitely likes to come up with alternate perspectives on everything, really, and turn things on their head. That was the first thing I noticed, that he really wants to push you in a certain direction sometimes. He can go with the flow, too. To get to work with him was amazing. He is one of our coolest, greatest British filmmakers ever.
Which direction did he push you on The Gentlemen? What ideas did you both want to turn on their heads?
I do get flexibility to do my own thing. What’s key is just getting three or four pieces of music, which if he really likes, then you can kind of run with that as an idea and a concept. Really, he doesn’t like generic music, so you’re always searching for sort of an angle. Is there an angle here? Can we do something more interesting than what this genre normally would have musically?
I think he thinks that way about lots of different things from costume design to set design and even the way he works with the actors a lot of the time. It’s quite well-documented that he will take a scene and flip it on his head and rewrite it on the day. The art of improvisation is key to Guy, as well. He likes to fire from the hip.
It’s almost diminishing returns to give a piece of music a ridiculous amount of attention, because what I think passes must might not work, you know what I mean? Sometimes a sketch is a good way to start. As with anything.
What musical elements of gangster stories did you want to both lean into and shy away from?
I think cool needle drops. Guy had done that on Lock, Stock and Snatch, so I think most of the projects I’ve done, we’ve veered away from making it about cool tracks and more about the score music. I guess his idea was that the film was a separate entity, but with this series, he really wanted to lean into a classical feel. That was the starting point, but that’s a pretty broad spectrum, so what can we do? What can we choose which is going to give this its own unique style?
So what did you do?
There was this idea of a of waltz to hold Eddie’s hand through this mad journey as he has to run this weed empire with Susie Glass. Also, the choral stuff, which plays the lunacy of what’s going on in Freddy’s mind. It’s an almost religious liturgical kind of music, that’s how it amplified the situation in his head. When he realizes he’s not going to inherit the family estate, he even says it’s like a divine right, doesn’t he? This aristocracy to him is everything.
So, that idea makes it really overblown at times. Bombastic I think is probably counter to a lot of gangster movies and TV stuff, which tends to be cool and edgy and dark. Here, a lot of the music was joyous in a way against the picture. When you put that against these images, it kept it bouncy, buoyant, and interesting.
You compose momentum very well. Your score in Wrath of Man, in particular, is great and gives that film so much speed.
Cheers, dude.
For a story this many hours long, how’d you want to create a similar propulsion?
You assess it on almost an episode by episode basis. As we get to the end, the music does become more heightened, a little more serious at times and a little more epic as the story becomes something a bit deeper and a bit more dangerous. But the ebb and flow is absolutely key. Coming from the movie world, it was a bit daunting to have eight hours potentially of music to write.
We kind of read the first two episodes Guy directed as a two-hour movie. After that we just ran with that vibe. But then, as you say, ratcheted up the tension or the momentum at certain key points in those episodes. Hopefully, that’s something I’m okay at knowing.
Tempo is such a key ingredient for music in general, knowing how to energize things in the right way and play off the actors in the correct way is absolutely vital, especially in The Gentleman when some of it is a bit unhinged. At other times, there are sentimental moments where he can really sit back and enjoy it.
Talking about ebb and flow, what’s the dance typically like with you between Guy Ritchie’s dialogue? How do you support it?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He likes these monologues. Unlike other directors I’ve worked with, he likes the music to remain consistent. If there’s an eight-minute long sequence or something, he generally would like the music to have a cohesive feel. He doesn’t like to hold the listener by the hand too heavily, so within that cue, it has to do a lot of stuff within one piece of music. Texture is a key ally there. How can we take this musical idea and keep it bubbling away for seven minutes and not be annoying and heighten the drama?
As you say, sit behind the dialogue and just support it. So yeah, it can be a challenge with those passages. I wrote some cues we didn’t need because the energy was in the dialogue, which is absolutely cool. Like, don’t overdo everything. I was always a fan of letting the acting do the talking, because I think it was so strong and the dialogue was so rich that sometimes you didn’t need to over egg the pudding.
How hands-on do you stay in the mix and everything?
I’m pretty hands-on editorially after, even after I’ve delivered the music, just because I did edit music for such a long time as well. I try to predict the future, but I don’t always succeed. It’s always the bits that you think is safe that’ll be a last minute redo or something.
Was there anything in particular that you were precious about?
It’s a good question. Was that precious? I would have liked to say no. Actually, the cue I really loved it, which James, Guy’s editor, wanted it to be longer, was when the father passed with the sort of cello and choir cue. Guy loved it, but sometimes you get the picture back and you have to accommodate a shorter version.
You know, there’s a meter, there’s an ebb and a flow to music. So, if suddenly you’ve got a very half a phrase, it just totally kills the vibe. I think that was one of the places where I said, “Can we just keep the cut we had?” Because it was a lovely marriage of music and picture.
How did you approach the different fractions of the mob, the different mobs we see? Did you want to define them with contrasting cues or themes?
Yeah, that’s interesting because I didn’t necessarily define them that distinctly. I saw it as a whole world of different mobsters. I didn’t necessarily delineate that clearly. Thematically, I didn’t go down that route.
I kept the themes generally to portray the lead character. I think there’s something cooler about that than, like, here’s a new character, here’s a new style, here’s a new piece of music. You can end up a little cheesy if you go down that route, I find personally.
This being your first TV show, say if you go into another season, what were some lessons from this experience that you take with you?
That it is possible to write three and a half hours worth of music and just to have faith in yourself and don’t be afraid to reuse certain themes, certain cues. Repetition is a powerful thing. The prevalence of the Succession theme, it’s pretty mono thematic, right? But it’s so effective and it’s rearranged and rehashed in many different versions, but they sort of always come back to that theme. If you strike some gold, reuse the gold.
The Gentlemen is available to stream on Netflix.
