Mani Ratnam's highly-anticipated magnum opus, Ponniyin Selvan: 2, is the talk of the town as ticket bookings for the epic historical action adventure film have begun in theatres in many parts of the world. Featuring music composed by Academy Award winner A. R. Rahman, the upcoming film is a sequel to the critically-acclaimed 2022 box office money-spinner, Ponniyin Selvan: 1, and will open in cinemas on April 28. In that light, Mani Ratnam and A. R. Rahman sat down for a heart-to-heart conversation with National Award-winning film critic Baradwaj Rangan, the Editor-in-Chief of Galatta Plus, to talk about the extensive efforts undertaken to make the adaptation of Ponniyin Selvan a reality from book to screen, while also reminiscing on their glorious and successful journey in cinema.
A. R. Rahman, who has redefined himself and the landscape of Indian music in almost every decade since his arrival on the musical scene in the early 1990s, has also created new pathways for the wider reach of music in terms of not just songs, but also the appreciation for background score. Upon how he differentiates his approach to the songs he composes and the background scores he works on, including Ponniyin Selvan, the hit music director stated, "The whole '90s I didn't know anything. I didn't have a clue what I was doing. Sometimes I would go with the visual. Sometimes I have to go against it. I always see the reaction of the director's eyes. You like it, you don't like it. But then, going to Hollywood, it was very similar to what scoring was with jingles. You have to go match every frame, which is a good and a bad thing. They don't like music fighting against the dialogue whereas we like a theme melody going when the dialogue is happening. And, if you work in Hollywood, they say, 'Oh no, no, that's actually fighting with my dialogue. Please remove that melody. Just keep the chords. Make it like a wallpaper thing.' "
Rahman continued, "The first five years after working in Hollywood, I then realized that there was something very good what I was doing before and something very good I've learnt now. For PS: 1, we finished the scoring, then the last few days were there for the print and I watched this movie and I felt like... we did a song. I said, 'Can we bring that back?' It raises that emotion. So, the very end is when we chopped all that stuff and changed almost seven places. Like when he was raising the flag, we could see the gush of blood going up. So, these emotional things were connected to the language, the culture and to how people get used to it."
Watch Mani Ratnam and A. R. Rahman in conversation with Baradwaj Rangan in the video below: