SPOTLIGHT WSA HONOREES
Soundtrack of our lives With multiple Oscar wins and awards under his belt, WSA guest of honour Alexandre Desplat has become one of the most celebrated, and prolific, modern composers. Dan Jolin reports
here can be few Hollywood composers who have worked harder this century than Alexandre Desplat. He has chalked up more than 160 scoring credits since the turn of the millennium, earning 11 Oscar nominations with wins for The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Shape Of Water. In a single year, he has been known to turn out as many as 10 scores. He is an artist who, it appears, is impossible to spread too thin. His achievements were apparent to the World Soundtrack Awards from early on, with Desplat given his first of five composer of the year prizes back in 2007 for Stephen Frears’ The Queen (a production Desplat joined at the last minute, having been parachuted in to replace its original composer). “I have been very lucky so far with the WSA,” he says, speaking from Spain, where he is working on George Clooney’s latest movie The Midnight Sky. “They’ve been very kind to me.” This year, as well as being a guest of honour for the WSA’s 20th anniversary edition, Desplat is nominated as composer of the year once more, for his work on three films: Greta Gerwig’s Little Women,, Roman Polanski’s An Officer And A J’Accuse) and CostaSpy (J’ Gavras’s Adults In The Room.. Three films that almost encapsulate Desplat himself. “You are right,” he says. “I hadn’t
Alexandre Desplat during sessions for Little Women
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David Giesbrecht
Alexandre Desplat
“a subconscious number of layers that built during my early years”. He cites as core inspirations listening to Mozart as a boy, watching Herbert von Karajan conducting on TV and seeing soprano Maria Callas perform with an orchestra. He also describes being overawed by the “incredible big scores” for Spartacus, Doctor Zhivago and Lawrence Of Arabia. “All these layers come together and you realise that’s what excites you,” he says. “The sound of the orchestra. The movements and the silhouette of the conductor. The blasting sound of the brass. The soft and tender sound of the strings. The distant sound of the flute. As well as the fact that when you watch movies, their music is always different. It could be jazz, it could be a full orchestra. I like that versatility.” Different beats
An Officer And A Spy
thought about it, but they capture who I am — half-French, half-Greek, with parents who gave me the values of America and the desire of becoming a Hollywood composer.” D e s p l a t ’s Greek mother and French father met at the University of Cal(Left) Saoirse Ronan in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women
‘American directors enjoy working with me because I have one foot in Europe and one in America’ Alexandre Desplat
ifornia and were married in San Francisco, before returning to Paris where their son was born in 1961. Desplat grew up on a staple diet of US cinema, playing piano from the age of five, then trumpet, then flute. The urge to focus his talents on cinema grew, he says, through
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Desplat moves from US movies to European films, from intimate dramas to blockbusters, rarely pulling from the same bag of tricks more than once. “I think if I were giving a masterclass to a bunch of students, it would be fun to play one piece each from Little Women, J’Accuse and Adults In The Room and ask them who is the composer,” he laughs. “They’re so different. That’s what’s so fantastic about film composing.” After grabbing the attention of US filmmakers with the waltzes of 2003’s The Girl With The Pearl Earring, Desplat was treated in Hollywood like a hot new talent. However, by this point he had already worked on around 50 films in Europe. “I suppose that’s why American directors enjoy working with me, because they can see I have one foot in Europe and one foot in America,” he says.
