THE SOUND OF MAGIC

Ahead of his Hong Kong concert, two-time Oscar-winning composer Alexandre Desplat looks at his prolific music career and talks about his hopes to write more for Asian cinema

- Zabrina Lo

There was huge—one might even say mastodonic—amount of online interest in Jurassic World Rebirth, months before the release of the action sci-fi movie in July this year. This is in no small part thanks to a trailer which features Scarlett Johansson morphing into a velociraptor that went viral in December 2024.

Turns out the trailer was fake, generated by AI.

This revelation sparked heated debates on the use of AI when it comes to creative content. French film composer Alexandre Desplat, a two-time recipient of the Oscar for best original score and man behind the new film’s score, has an unambiguous opinion: “I don’t see the point [of AI]. Being an artist is about using your imagination. That's it.”

He has certainly proved the power of his imagination during his prolific four-decade-long career. Desplat is responsible for some of the most soul-stirring, iconic and memorable music for the silver screen: the scores for Ang Lee's Lust, Caution (2007), David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) and Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water (2017), to name but a very small sample.

His music will be celebrated this month in a concert performed by the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra at the Cultural Centre, as part of this year’s French May. As well as well-known Hollywood scores, the evening will also feature his earlier work for French cinema, such as the score for the 1996 comedy war film Un Héros Très Discret (“A Self-Made Hero”). While he is also a conductor, Desplat will not be helming the show due to Hollywood commitments; he has entrusted the task to his violinist wife, Dominique Lemonnier, better known by her stage name Solrey.

While Desplat’s discography also includes the likes of