Exclusive

Music makes the film

By Ranga CHANDRARATHNE

In an exclusive interview, Lakshman Joseph de Saram, the Sri Lankan based international award-winning film composer reveals his most recent projects, including the globally highly anticipated movie Bel Ami, starring some of Hollywood’s biggest stars, notably, Robert Pattinson of Twilight fame and Uma Thurman, the star of the Kill Bill series.

Laksman Joseph de Saram is an internationally reputed Sri Lankan musician who is the founder of the Chamber Music Society of Sri Lanka, the region’s newest platform for exciting and innovative interpretations of classics and a champion for politically and culturally explosive music of contemporary Sri Lanka and South Asia.

Lakshman is a post-modernist composer who revolutionised the Sri Lankan music scene with his innovative and highly embellished film music, exploiting the intrinsic properties of both classical and contemporary Western music. He is a master exponent of classical and applied music in Sri Lanka who has been recognised locally and internationally for his peerless compositions of music.

Possibly the highest paid musician in the country, we ask Lakshman about sadness, propaganda and money, and how they have impacted on his creative output.

Question : On the completion of your 10th film score in 10 years, from ‘Mille Soya’ to a multi million-dollar Hollywood film, where do you see yourself now creatively?

Answer: Creatively, I accept what I have and try to make the best of it. Craft-wise, I'm very much in the throes of honing those skills, something I hope to keep on doing.

Q: What difference do you see between your first work on Mille Soya and one of the last films you scored, Bel Ami for instance?

Craft

A: Actually, I have scored three films since ‘Bel Ami,’ and I'm working on one currently. But the difference, if any, is the craft and its the execution; the experience gained over the years has played a big role. But content wise, you draw from the same spring essentially, the core beam mostly never changes, all you do is drop the relevant filters in front. But maybe, all the horrors and joys you have picked up along the way add to the mix, who knows.

Q: Your music has tended to be more on the sad side of things, why is so ?

A: It's the films I choose to do; they have mostly been the reflective and melancholic types, plus, I am gradually beginning to embrace and accept the undeniable truth, for me at least, that life, in its shocking purity, is a dull constant ache, in the true Buddhist sense of the word.

Comedy

Q: Would you like to score a comedy?

A: (Laughs) Possibly can see myself starting with a romantic comedy before we go all out slapstick. No hurry though.

Q: Vimukthi Jayasundara's Between Two Worlds had you going for a totally different soundscape, your music was hailed by the New York Times for adding much to the film. How were you inspired to deviate from your usual sound base?

Lakshman Joseph de Saram

A: It took some time to figure out the general approach, and when we did finally get to the studio with a mix of professional and street musicians, I had a fistful of sheet music but only a vague idea on how it was going to pan out. Things ultimately clicked after I flung out most of the written music and went with an overdose of formatted improvisation. After a load of trial and error and some bizarre demands on the musicians, the music was described by Variety as a soul extractor and the N.Y. Times called it 'a stirring score of blood and toxicity.' Go figure.

Improvisations

Q: Is that how you approach your scores now, by using improvisation?

A: No, all depends on the film's requirement. Bel Ami for instance had over 72 pages of music written for full orchestra, including harp and a 9-foot Bosendorfer. Mille Soya had a bunch of drunken funeral band musicians; Le Papillion Noir had a string quartet acting ever so preciously. It all depends.

Q: Boodee Keerthisena’s new film ‘Matha’ which is based on the recent conflict, do you view it as propaganda or true cinema?

A: That's a sticky question, and you might get a better answer from the director or writer.

Q: What were the compelling reasons for you to agree to score this potentially jingoistic film, the story line? The contract fee?

A: Firstly, I did it as a favour to my friend Boodee; secondly, I looked at it as an unrequited love story between two people yearning for some sanity in their lives. Boodee battled to make sure that there was no blatant triumphalism anywhere in the film. The ending is hardly euphoric. As for the contract, my fee was laughable, even by local standards. Ask the producers.

Q: Was it satisfying to score a war movie?

A: Frankly, If I looked at it purely as a war film, of winners and losers, then no. You had this almost imperceptible, but very present feeling of unease. Maybe because the conflict was still too fresh, the blood was hardly dry, the memories jarring. I started working on the film seven months after the final shot was fired. What the experience did bring out to me was the essence and importance of 'time' when it comes to dealing with expressing bloodshed through art, no matter how cathartic.

Time makes all the difference, scoring a film, for instance, of the defeat of King Elara by Prince Dutugamunu is so much easier on your mind because it happened in sometime BC, not because it was any less brutal. I am sure, in the years to come, there will be great films made on various aspects on the history of the last 30 years of this country, where we will be able to understand more dispassionately, the ridiculousness of killing each other.

But, as I said before, this film for me was a love story, using the brutality as an unfortunate backdrop.

Q: Still on the film, do you think Prasanna Vithanage or Vimukthi Jayasundara, two directors who you know well and who have made award-winning films about the war, would have undertaken to direct Matha?

Control

A: I'm not sure, they normally only work with their own scripts, or scripts they have total control over.

Q: Are you saying that Boodee had no control over the script?

A: Good question, but I'm not sure of the answer.

Q: You are presently working on a film by the French/Belgian director Samy Pavel, what is it about?

A: I see it as a quiet ode to loneliness and disenchantment, seen through the eyes of four women, a Thai, Japanese, Indian and German. Four stories with a common thread running through out. Samy is passionate; he is very sensitive to the subtleties that make a film breath, and he is a master at the craft.

Q: Pavel is a director that has worked with composers like the legendary Ennio Morricone and Oscar winner Gabriel Yared, how do you see yourself in that exalted company?

A: An absolute nonentity.

Q: As a Sri Lankan based international composer, it is well known throughout the industry that you command the highest fees. How much does money play apart from your artistic decisions?

Money

A: First of all, I don't think I'm the highest paid, I certainly don’t feel like I’m the highest paid anything for that matter, and also, I did not dedicate my life to music and art because I wanted to make money. If making money was my priority, as a teen, when I had to make that all important decision, I would have dismissed the recommendations of the international talent scouts, brushed aside the opportunity to study at the most prestigious high school for the performing arts, scoffed at getting into Juilliard, and instead, got an MBA and put my mind into running a sweat shop or something.

High culture, as you know full well, is not for the profit minded. It is an ethos, and for the initiated, it is a moral obligation.

Art and culture was around way before money was even thought about. Of course, in the overtly commercial film world, market values are such that a composer of the Zimmer variety (Hans Zimmer) scoring a Hollywood blockbuster can make upwards of multiple millions of dollars for less than thirty minutes of music, the hollowness is not lost on me, strange world we live in.

Advice

Q: What advice do you have for aspiring Sri Lankan composers who would like to follow in your footsteps, making the millions scoring for international films staring people like Uma Thurman and Robert Pattinson?

A: Honestly, I have no idea, other than to keep at it if you have got something going; it's not enough to be merely gifted. It is hard work. Also, if it's meant to happen, it will, I suppose.

But most importantly, my advice to aspiring musicians is that the motive should be never about the millions. Leave that to the countless mudalali’s of the world. Because if making money becomes the sole factor, or an important factor in our sequence of ideas in the process of expression, it’s over. You might as well put that effort into looking at innovative ways on selling some cheap consumables to the public. Forget about art.

Incentive

The incentive that aspiring musicians need to be aware of, is that they belong to an elite few. That they have had someone recognize a rare talent early on in their lives, encouraged them to nature and appreciate it, spent years honing those talents in solitary confinement, and then if lucky, have a great guru give it direction ultimately.

And if it all works out, the dividends are uncommon, not just the kind measured by cash and a figure on a bottom line. That’s why, for every one-in-a billion Mozart-like genius, you have a thousand-odd pompous kings and barons who have dropped by the wayside of time, never to be mentioned again. That was good enough incentive for me.

But then, the game of global creative arts is as fickle as it comes, here today, gone tomorrow, or never there in the first place. The risks are immense.

That’s why I certainly don’t encourage my children to take it up as a profession. Who knows, you’ll soon see me looking into the world of garments, or whatever makes money these days.