AR Rahman calls 'Ramayana' the biggest project of his career, collaborating with Hans Zimmer across five cities for its epic soundtrack. Despite the exhausting process, Rahman expresses pride in bringing Indian culture to a global audience through this ambitious adaptation.
Filmmaker Nitesh Tiwari's Ramayana has been a long time coming—three and a half years, to be precise, for the film’s composer AR Rahman. When Rahman says it is the biggest movie he has ever worked on, he is hardly exaggerating.
"This is the most exciting project I’ve ever worked on. I've never done such a big movie ever in my life," gushed Rahman in a conversation with THR India.
Backed by Namit Malhotra, Ramayana is composed in collaboration between the maestro and visionary composer Hans Zimmer. The adaptation stars Ranbir Kapoor, Sai Pallavi and Yash as Ram, Sita and Ravana respectively.
With more than half the Ramayana soundtrack out so far, Rahman shares that there are still some surprises in store as the film approaches its release. “It's a good time now, because we worked on this for almost three and a half years. And now, it's nice to see the response. ‘Jai Jai Ram’ is out, and almost 70 percent of the album is released. We have some surprises coming up next."
Speaking about the mythological epic, he adds with excitement how impressive he has found the work done by DNEG, one of the film’s co-production banners, who also handled the film’s visual effects. “Their work is extraordinary. I just saw some footage, the first two reels. I was blown away.”
The collaboration with Hans Zimmer was built on a long-running relationship the two maestros share. Rahman and Zimmer first met in 2009, when they shared the same agent. Zimmer later invited Rahman to perform with his band at the Oscars in 2012, and the two have developed a fond relationship over the years.
When they finally sat down to work on Ramayana together, the reunion was warm. "There was a very friendly vibe when I went back to his studio. He was very excited that finally we were working together," Rahman recalls. He adds that they met in London, Los Angeles, and Abu Dhabi to work on the film’s soundtrack.
Rahman also points that the collaboration spanning three cities gives some sense of the scale involved. “Quite a lot of work has gone into this movie. When you see it, you’ll understand.”
The process was, by his own account, both exhausting and unlike anything he has done before. "Sometimes we had to go through 13 different iterations to come back to the second or the first iteration," he reveals. "It's a process which was a bit exhausting, but gratifying in the end."
Complications and difficulties arose from the film's various dubs and versions, Rahman explains, adding, "Because there are so many different levels of creative things being done in the CG, different languages and different versions of the movie." Rather than resist the complexity, he chose to lean into it. "I remember thinking that I should be a part and help this whole process rather than become an obstruction and complaining. I'll help to ease the process," he shares.
Rahman reveals that the past three months, though satisfying, were some of the more brutal and demanding parts of the film. "Sometimes we slept for three hours, four hours. We've been traveling to Los Angeles, London, Budapest, Mumbai and Chennai—these five different places constantly scoring."
Now that the work is nearly done, the feeling is not relief so much as pride. "I'm really proud of the fact that this is probably the biggest movie I've ever done in my career. And it looks incredibly good. I'm really proud that we are able to take a culture from this land to present to the world where Sony is distributing 70,000 screens for the first time...and I'm a part of it."
The conversation takes place as Rahman brings his renowned Wonderment tour back to India, with a show in Mumbai on November 1 and in New Delhi later in the month, on the 21st. Rahman notes how the tour has been evolving as his newer projects release, with the Chhaava soundtrack making an entry earlier in the tour. Now, days away from its release, Ramayana stands next in line, and is highly awaited too.
When asked how he would describe the film's soundtrack, Rahman slowly grins, with only a word to encompass it: "Epic. Really epic."