I have no idea what the Academy’s fussy music branch will make of it, but A.R. Rahman’s busy, boisterous score for “Slumdog Millionaire” is one of my favourite efforts in the field this year. Fusing contemporary Indian pop with more traditional Bollywood motifs and flashes of electronica, it’s an achievement as limber and witty as the film it accompanies.
Rahman has long been revered, both as a composer and a pop star, in his native India, but he’s only recently begun testing Western waters. I appreciated his elaborately heightened contributions to last year’s “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” more than most, but “Slumdog” should really make his name in this part of the world.
There’s a brief but insightful interview with Rahman over at Vulture, in which he discusses the considerable differences between working for Bollywood and working for Boyle — a difference over over 100 musical cues, for starters. In the light of a discussion going on a recent comments thread about how a score should operate within a film, I thought this statement rather interesting:
What’s good about [Boyle] is that he likes how Indian films mix music. You push it and it comes out. We wanted it edgy, upfront. He said every piece of music was going to be a piece by itself. Normally some directors suppress music — they always want the effects to be loud and the music to be softer. Danny wanted it loud.