‘Vikramaditya Motwane is the only one who allowed me the space to experiment’: Alokananda Dasgupta

But the idea of fusing the train whistle came from a distinct childhood memory. Dasgupta, daughter of filmmaker Buddhadeb Dasgupta — a towering figure in Bengali cinema — was a young piano student when she was awed by Crows, a segment in Japanese auteur Akira Kurosawa’s 1990 Dreams, where an art student finds himself inside Van Gogh’s paintings. In it, the Dutch artist compares his work to a locomotive. Kurasawa intensified the moment with the haunting whistle of a steam engine fused into Frederic Chopin’s Raindrop — one of the most well-received preludes by the Polish virtuoso composer. The idea stayed with Dasgupta and, years later, it conceptually culminated in Jubilee’s opening score. “That whistle has witnessed so much. It signifies the journey, the pain, the Partition,” says Dasgupta.

A good background score can convey emotions and blur boundaries that even the spoken word cannot. The best kind strikes a delicate balance with the visuals. So, if Dasgupta’s opening transports one into the past in a matter of seconds, the rest of the background score, which is a play on the idea of “classic melodies without any modern instrumentation”, proves her mantle as a narrator in Motwane’s drama. Just like her previous project, Sacred Games (2018-19) did. “Unlike Sacred Games, which came with politics and mythology, Jubilee didn’t have something tangible, those sensational moments, high-intense chases, or a tangible hook. But it was intense to the core. Vikram wanted the score to be timeless and not something that is a caricature or an imitation of that time,” says Mumbai-based Dasgupta.

Alokananda Dasgupta

Motwane also used the word ‘ambition’ a lot. Mainly to define the character of Binod Das who turns into the superstar Madan Kumar, from a studio hand. For the sequence, Roy turned to her English literature lessons from college, including the Greek tragedies. “The pride, the mistakes, the insecurity, the hunger for power, the arrogance and the rise and fall (of the characters), this is what came to mind when Vikram spoke of ambition. And these are emotions that still exist,” says Roy, who held on to the word ‘ambition’ and began Madan Kumar’s first visuals as a star with a flute and clarinet and then took it to the eerie world with a large strings section. “I am highly moved by visuals,” says Dasgupta, who is also inspired by filmmaker Satyajit Ray’s use of music in his cinema.

Dasgupta grew up in Kolkata, learning classical piano and Odissi, and was fed on world cinema. At home, she heard Bach and Beethoven, Begum Akhtar, Rabindra Sangeet, Simon & Garfunkel, Carpenters and The Beatles. However, public performances were nerve-racking and made Dasgupta anxious. “So much so that I decided not to perform. I realised that I liked to analyse and appreciate music more,” says Dasgupta, who eventually learnt that she could do other things in music. After studying English literature at St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata, she went to Toronto to study composition and musicology at York University, where she heard composer Amit Trivedi’s music in Aamir (2008). She wanted to work with Trivedi and became his assistant. She learnt to notate his compositions and work with music software. She began doing commercials and composed jingles for Pepsi, Apple and Fortis Hospitals, among others. Then there was Sujay Dahake’s Marathi film Shala (2011), and her father’s films Anwar Ka Ajab Kissa (2013) and The Bait (2016), Neeraj Ghayawan’s short film, Juice (2017) and Trapped (2016). But it was Motwane’s Sacred Games, that got her noticed.

Working with Motwane allowed her to experiment extensively. “I can say that he is the only one who has allowed me that space to experiment. Of course he is very clear with what he wants. With him, it’s my playground but his boundaries,” says Dasgupta.

However, Jubilee, Dasgupta says, was one of the harder scores. “I am not an old timer, but I am also heavily influenced by the cinema of this time, more Bengali films than Hindi. So, eventually, culturally speaking, I found an identification point. I felt a connection with this renaissance chiaroscuro (use of contrasts between light and shade), the real-life detail in Vikram’s craft,” says Dasgupta, who took an instant affinity to orchestral instruments rather than relying on technology. “Everything can be expressed through orchestral music, you do not need artificial computing, and it’s strange because technology is something that I use heavily to create music.”

While her inventive score has found attention, it has also typecast her in a nation where the ‘music’ of a film still means the songs in it while the background score is considered a mechanical process. For her, though, they are not separate worlds. “I have done some songs, too. It’s frustrating when people think of the background score as a technical job. I want to do an album with songs just so that people identify me with music, as well. Also, songs feel less laborious. The process of creating a background score is intensely laborious and lonely,” says Dasgupta.

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