I have been walking since my heart attack in 2018. I average around 2 1/2 – 3 hrs of walking a week. During the walk I would listen to a variety of genres of music (mostly soundtracks) and find myself learning by analyzing the orchestration, arrangement and emotion of the music while I’m walking.
Today’s listening session is Volker Bertelmann’s (known as Hauschka) & Dustin O’Halloran; they collaborated together on this score “Lion”
Synopsis
Based on a true story, Saroo a five year old child living in India of a poor but happy rural family, follows his older brother on the train to the city. His older brother leaves him by the train on a bench while he goes to earn some money for the family. Saroo falls asleep then wakes up to look for his brother and boards a train but gets trapped and takes him on a journey 1000 miles away. Now alone in this alien urban environment, too young to identify himself or his home to the authorities, Saroo struggles as a street child until he is sent to the orphanage. Saroo is soon adopted by the Brierley family in Tasmania and grows up in a loving prosperous home. Now in his adulthood, Saroo is plagued with memories of his lost family and starts to search for them and his guilt hides his quest from his adoptive parents and girlfriend. Only when he has an epiphany does he realizes not only the answer he needs, but also the steadfast unconditional love he always had from his love ones in both worlds.
The score
The first time I saw the film, I kept hearing this recurring theme throughout the movie. This theme seems to bring up the lead character’s state of mind struggles of his past and present. It seems to makes sense to me that the score is centered around him, meaning the score is augmenting his emotional state of mind in the film; whether he is just reflecting, or on a journey, lost in the moment, the struggle of surviving, and feeling alone. The score transitions in his young adulthood with a sense of hopefulness and optimism but there’s a hint of dissonance and heartache reflecting his struggle mentally on his past. The recurring theme is introduced again as a sense of hope and perseverance as he begins to find his lost family and then reuniting with them. The movie ends with a celebratory song called “Never Give Up” by artist Sia while showing a pictorial bio of Saroo’s journey of being adopted by his new family and then a reuniting of the two mothers meeting for the first time.
Listen to Hauschka & Dustin O’Halloran’s score
