![]() For the dozens of scores he’s composed for his equally prolific native cinema, Rahman’s also given contemporary flair to such pictures as the battle-ready England of Elizabeth The Golden Age and the Chinese action of Warriors of Heaven and Earth. Though the composer has never quite done a score like this, it would be a huge mistake to think of Rahman as a musician only good for handling “Indian” soundtracks. It’s a journey of desert and transfiguration that Boyle communicates with typical kinetic abandon, while allowing Rahman to go into unfamiliar melodic passageways. Yet like Slumdog, 127 Hours also has a hero who goes through unbelievable adversity before coming out on top. Needless to say, the marketing challenge of 127 Hours is selling a film this isn’t exactly the kind of ultimately, toe-tapping feel good time that Boyle and Rahman’s last collaboration became (let alone dealing with the unspoken freakshow attraction of going to see the severance of an entirely different body part). Both make a claustrophobic chamber piece as vibrant, and emotionally impactful as life itself, listening to the big picture of one man’s struggle with exhilarating, and moving results. But where anyone else might make the better part of the film’s 90 minutes tick by with dull dread, we aren’t talking about Danny Boyle, let alone A.R. Here Boyle’s musical choices alternately taunt and haunt Aron Ralston, mesmerizing tones that lead towards the only grisly, and existence-affirming choice that’s possible. But what happens for a risk-taking director when he takes the biggest gamble of all with a composer who’s never done an “American” score? The result is a movie about a guy who’s stuck at the bottom of a desert canyon with a boulder pinning his arm, trying to figure a way out of the inevitable for 127 Hours. Whether it’s been punks, rage-filled zombies or Indian kids, Boyle has always used music to keep his characters on their feet, a sense of motion that can become dizzying. Rahman’s exotic pop riffs in Slumdog Millionaire, a film that culminated with a train station gyrating to “Jai Ho.” It was all part and parcel of what made composer walk of out last year’s Oscar ceremonies with twin wins for Best Score and Original Song, not to mention an international hit song. ![]() But none of Boyle’s color-saturated mash-ups have been more Best Picture popular than when teamed with the worldbeat of A.R. Scottish addicts did screwball crimes to Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” in Trainspotting, the religious strains of “Ave Maria” gave way to the rabid zombie guitar run of John Murphy’s score to 28 Weeks Later before that composer teamed with the electro group Orbital for the space journey of Sunshine. Cutting his movies to the fierce energy, and hallucinatory rhythms of a rave with particularly good drugs, Boyle’s best, confrontational imagery has pulsated with often-improbable mix tapes of score and songs, creating any number of memorably crazy scenes. When it comes to grooving filmmakers, Danny Boyle just might be the most creative D.J.-cum-director of them all.
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