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Monday, May 17, 2010

Score of Three Cities

Background Score – 70 is from Meenaxi – A Tale of 3 Cities. Composer – A.R.Rahman. Though I attempted many times to watch this film, I couldn’t move past the utter boredom that the 15 minutes of the film is. When I came to know that A.R.Rahman performed a Suite from the background score of Meenaxi in his recent concert with London Philharmonic Orchestra, I got interested to check out the orchestral stuff he has done for this film. I dug the VCD and watched the film, just for the background score. The film turned out to be quite interesting.

A.R.Rahman’s background score plays a very vital role in bringing a lot of coherence, drama, momentum and emotional heft in a dull, fickle and meandering narrative of the film. Rahman has set three distinct music themes that are characteristic of the 3 different cities the narrative travels to. Hyderabad gets a catchy qawwali bit as its signature tune, which also is the theme for the writer (When the writer comes to Prague to meet his fictional character - Maria, the same theme reprises). Jaisalmer theme is a folksy melody sung by an earthy piped instrument and all of music cues for Prague episode are grand western orchestral pieces.

Though the narrative demands scoring in sync with the sound of the soil of the different cities, Rahman connects both Jaisalmer and Prague episode - Meenaxi – Kameshwar and Maria – Kameshwar love story with a common musical theme, which is the gorgeous Oboe theme that is introduced upfront in the opening credits of the film.


2 comments:

Unknown said...

The Oboe theme was really good. I have not watched this film but this score somehow reminded me of a scene in Iruvar where Ananadan will come to the sets and will be trying out the sword.

P.S. Suresh Kumar said...

Vinod - I guess it reminds of Iruvar because of the Snare-rich rhythm that is common in both the pieces..