Composer Roger Suen on the Emotional Lullaby of ‘Blue Bayou’

Composer Roger Suen has created a soothing, gentle lullaby for the emotional rollercoaster of Blue Bayou. Suen has worked on director Justin Chon’s two other films, but this film underscores the sense of belonging that many people struggle with every day. This score feels very personal and it manages to be both intimate and huge when the story calls for it. It’s a hauntingly beautiful collection of music.

Not only did Chon write and direct this film, but he is also the lead character. His Antonio is a man who has to do a lot of things on the fly and think on his feet, but he also doesn’t have a true sense of himself yet. In the track “Antonio,” Suen was able to capture the essence of the character in just a short amount of time.

“A lot of Justin’s films explore this theme of being stuck. He’s not American. He’s not Korean. Justin likes this sense of what a lullaby gives you with this rocking back and forth. We tried to capture that with a five note motif. We hardly ever use an eight bar theme. It’s a meandering thing where the score goes up and goes down to try and illustrate how it doesn’t go anywhere and his character is hanging at the bayou.”

Suen went on to add that the overall feeling of the film was to invoke a lullaby. It feels like a parent trying to rock their child to sleep after a restless day.

“So much of this is coming to terms with how he got to America and how he never really had a mother. I tried to emulate a Korean lullaby, and it didn’t work out to do it in a literal sense. It ended with the vibe of a lullaby.”

One of Suen’s favorite tracks is “Finding Mother” and that pull comes from Antonio’s longing for that maternal presence. This specific moment has a mournful building of strings that feelings like a desperate search. The way the music cascades over itself towards the end is beautiful.

“It’s the big showpiece and the start of the third act. All of searching and all this pain is culminating in one scene so musically all the themes and motifs are competing for space to make sense of themselves. They don’t actually resolve–they just end. That’s kind of like the film itself too. We had this explosion of emotions which is what Antonio is feeling so that’s why we allowed ourselves to be almost theatrical about it.”

The climax of Chon’s film is incredibly emotionally volatile. When you listen to “Don’t Go,” you can hear the characters in the final confrontation and it, yet again, allows the audience to experience the arcs of the characters on screen. This was especially difficult since Suen didn’t share the exact experience.

“I don’t even know how to begin with that. I stopped counting how many versions of that there was. The first version was not related to what is in the movie. I have versions where the music is more epic. I don’t know if I have an elegant answer to be honest. It was like a lot of trial and error. We tried to build on personal experience, but I don’t have that experience so I couldn’t go that route. What is in the movie is my best guess at those horrible feelings in that moment. The cue right before that–“I Won’t Catch You”–has always sounded the most traditionally Hollywood. We meant to make that a red herring. We were trying to find a way to make the audience think everything is going to go fine. They are going to end how everyone wants it to end and we are trying to psyche everyone out. The character is ready to uproot his kid and only in that moment he’s with the audience. He’s changing his mind too when he sees them together.”

Blue Bayou is in theaters now.