British filmmaker and “Slumdog Millionaire” director Danny Boyle is well-known for his use of music, whether it be the punk-rock vibrancy of “Trainspotting,” the moody gauziness of “The Beach,” the fancifulness of “A Life Less Ordinary,” to the dread and apocalyptic-ness of “28 Days Later.”
In this interview with Anne Thompson from Telluride, Boyle discusses his upcoming crowd-pleaser, ‘Slumdog’ but also delivers this great little quote about music which we felt we had to excerpt cause it says a everything about how music is used in films and his unique approach.
“The music [in films] in India is much louder, much more confident. We hide music in Western films, because it’s a hidden manipulative tool because we don’t want people to notice. We want it to to work on you and massage your heart for whatever reason, but actually [as a filmmaker], you don’t want it to be noticed. [In India] it’s like BLAM, this is music! We can dance to this! So I love that fact that you can mix [the music] quite high, but it’s also still quite melodramatic. In India when you have an extreme there [in film], it’s so extreme, so we bring a bit of that culture I hope.”
When we saw Boyle speak at the Toronto International Film Festival, he called A.R. Rahman, the man who composed the ‘Slumdog’ score, the “Puff Daddy of India.” To Thompson he says, “He’s like more famous than Michael Jackson was in his heyday. He loved doing this because it was something different and it allowed him to crossover into Western culture.”
A.R. Rahman composed an original track with M.I.A. called “O… Saya” for the film and that’ll be coming out on the “Slumdog Millionaire” soundtrack, details of which are evidently being announced soon. The movie song of the year, “Paper Planes” is in the film too, but we’re not sure if it’s going to make the soundtrack yet or what. Rahman also produced some tracks off of M.I.A.’s Kala and she calls him “the Indian Timbaland.”
It’s not a big spoiler or anything since it’s been reported here and there, but ‘Slumdog’ unspools with a big Bollywood number on the end credits which really makes you grin ear to ear. The Rahman-composed song is called, “Jai Ho,” and that will surely be on the film’s soundtrack no doubt.