Man of the Ear

A.R. Rahman is no longer the eager front-bencher of the 1990s, keen to prove his musical mettle. Now a more relaxed back-bencher, happy and yet more creatively ambitious, he is eyeing the larger pictureleaving his full artistic mark on the global stage

- POOJA BIRAIA

A small red room inside an unassuming building off a bylane in Chennai transports you into alternate reality. A winding staircase leads up from the ground floor to the mezzanine where a blue carpeted floor contrasts with walls covered in red roses from floor to ceiling, enhanced by mood lighting. At the centre lies a big egg chair with soft red velvet seating. Behind it, a full-length poster reads “ARR Immersive Entertainment”.

A manager helps with a headset, asks me to relax, and switches off the lights. For the next 37 minutes, I am immersed in a multi-sensory cinematic experience—a space where sight, sound and scent blur the lines between reality and a parallel universe.

The story follows an heiress and musician, played by French actress Nora Arnezeder, who uses her memory of scents to track down the men who changed her destiny 20 years after she was orphaned. This is Le Musk, a 37-minute virtual reality film written and directed by two-time Oscar-winning composer A.R. Rahman. The film, featuring a soundtrack of 12 world music songs, has been showcased at galas around the world, including Cannes, but has yet to be officially released because of “bottlenecks”. I have been fortunate to catch a first glimpse.

For Rahman, Le Musk has become a lesson in patience, but once it is released, he will be at the forefront of immersive cinema, where viewers become participants in the story rather than mere observers.