How Working on Ava DuVernay’s ‘Origin’ Helped Composer Kris Bowers Discover the ‘Power of Complex Simplicity’

Origin is my favorite film of 2023. I was stunned by it at TIFF and have been unable to shake it ever since.

Based on Isabel Wilkerson’s non-fiction work “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,” Origin explores how the caste system is at the root of humanity’s social systems and ongoing racist tendencies. Writer and director Ava DuVernay has adapted this seminal work with extraordinary vision. The film intertwines stories taking place in Nazi-era Germany with scenes of American slavery and India’s Caste system with author Isabel Wilkerson (the brilliant portrayed by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor)’s personal backstory and familial losses.

Origin blends fictional characters with world history and manages to feel simultaneously like a biopic, a documentary, and a historical drama. I realize that description may seem intimidating, and Origin is indeed an emotionally difficult film to watch, but trust me, don’t let that deter you.

DuVernay guides the viewer through time and difficult concepts with ease and has created a gripping, singular drama that feels like cinematic poetry. Assisting DuVernay in her quest to sweep her audience through stunning stories of resilience is composer Kris Bowers. His score features lush orchestrations and extended pieces with Bowers behind the piano—marrying beautifully with DuVernay’s carefully crafted images.

Perhaps best known for his work on Bridgerton and Green Book, Bowers, already an Oscar, Emmy, and Grammy nominee, is having the biggest year of his career. He has directed the Oscar-contending short film, The Last Repair Shop. In addition to Origin, he is the composer behind Netflix’s Queen Charlotte, Marvel’s Secret Invasion, Haunted Mansion, and the upcoming The Color Purple.

At just 34, Kris Bowers has established himself as one of the most creative and visionary musical talents. Here, Bowers joins Awards Daily’s Shadan Larki to discuss reuniting with DuVernay (they previously worked together on the miniseries When They See Us) and how he infused his score for Origin with different musical histories and cultures—and most importantly, empathy and emotion.

Awards Daily: Kris, you’ve worked with Ava before. But Origin is so ambitious and different from anything she’s done before, different from anything that anyone’s done before.

Kris Bowers: It felt apparent that this was something I’d never seen before. It also felt like Ava was the only person who could make this movie. Everything she’s done in her career up to this point felt like it perfectly led to this kind of project. It makes sense that she envisioned Origin as she did—this balance of factual information, information from the book, and this profoundly human and emotional story.

Ava called me on a Wednesday, I read the book, and we met the following Tuesday. We talked about how much the book represents and how there are these deeply important and moving romantic relationships and human stories. One of Ava’s first questions to me after watching was, ‘Well, how are we going to represent those relationships? How are we going to make sure that those are very prominent? And how do we make sure that the music dives into these cultures in a very specific way.’ At the same time, we wanted there to be interconnectedness with the score across the board to underline what we’re seeing in the story and Isabel’s journey. That was how we focused the score for this very ambitious story.

AD: If we could dig into that a little further, I’m curious about the fact that Origin has these quasi-chapters; there’s India, Germany, Isabel’s personal story—how did make those musically distinct enough while also having that interconnective tissue throughout the score?

KB: One of my biggest things was doing my own research, like looking into music written during the Holocaust. That was the first step for me: finding composers like Walter Kaufmann and Simon Laks, who was the orchestra director at Auschwitz and wrote a lot of music during that time.

I looked at those composers and their compositional approach. But, what impacted me was recognizing the reason for such small instrumentation in those pieces. Throughout the whole score for Origin, even when you have this big orchestra, there are always soloists coming in and out throughout the whole piece. And that decision was based on the influence of those smaller ensemble pieces I found in that research.

I also found Dalit musicians I could speak to about the traditions of that music and that culture. I learned there’s a drum called the Parai that is played in these different rituals. It has a specific polyrhythm that’s usually played with that.

I wanted to take some of those elements and have those present throughout the score. Where there’s a rhythmic polyrhythm that might be happening, that’s inspired by Dalit music, but it’s being put into the string orchestra.

The musical palette was about finding a way to have something that can be aligned with the range of emotions we see in the range of scale. We go from these really intimate moments to these really vast ideas and these vast concepts—having moments where it’s just a few musicians and moments to where there’s this huge string section and this huge string orchestra— deciding on that palette, I think, was really helpful. So, even though I was pulling things from these other music histories, I was putting it all through this specific palette that went across the whole score.

AD: Tell me more about working with the Dalit musicians.

KB: The process of collaborating with the Dalit musicians was so fascinating. I would send them a piece of music, and then we would have somebody translate the actual sheet music. I have a PDF of how the sheet music of what I wrote was translated for the Dalit musician. It’s fascinating because if somebody put that sheet music in front of me, I would never be able to read. I have no idea what it says because of their way of writing.

We were talking to the percussion ensembles, this father and his sons, and they told us they’d never heard of Dalit musicians being featured in a Hollywood movie. We were really appreciative of the ability and platform to play music from their tradition and culture. It was an honor to have been a part of a project that called for that. It all goes back to Ava. One of Ava’s first conversations was, ‘How are we going to get these Dalit musicians on this score?’ Ava made such an effort for cultural accuracy and inclusion on the filmmaking side that we couldn’t have this score happen without that. My team put a lot of effort into tracking down those musicians, translating, finding studios in India, and finding ways to collaborate remotely with them and record in real time. Having instrumentation, I think, is the thing I’m most proud of.

AD: Is there a track or moment that stands out to you as something that best encompasses your approach to the whole film?

KB: There are two that stand out to me. There’s a piece called “Leaves,” which plays when Isabel discovers Brett. I wrote that piece completely free, with no clicker, just me playing piano, responding to what I was watching. And it’s a six-minute piece of music.

I think that piece encompasses the process for Origin as a whole because it was really just about capturing the emotion. Once I had that palette I mentioned, the rest of the process was purely emotional. There’s no way I could express the complexity of what this story is about through any other medium than music. It feels like the only way I could articulate how Origin makes me feel. So, “Leaves” was the most visceral of the process in terms of writing something.

Conceptually, there’s a piece about firewall, which starts when Isabel begins to write the pillars of Caste on her whiteboard. We also see what happens with August (Finn Wittrock) and Irma (Victoria Pedretti). You go to the south and see a lynching—that whole extended sequence. I think that piece encapsulates the range of instrumentation within Origin’s score. There are soloists, and there are moments of really big ensembles and moments of small ensembles, like polyrhythms. I think that piece is conceptually one that captures everything. And “Leaves” is more of something that captures the heart of my process for Origin.

AD: You know, it’s funny, your music always surprises me. I feel like I think I know what direction you’ll take something, and then you do something different. I just never know what to expect. What’s your process? How would you define a Kris Bowers piece?

KB: My writing tends to come from an emotional place. I feel honored to work on these projects which make me feel emotional when I watch them. There are so many times watching Origin, as an audience member, that I was crying involuntarily. I try not to cry, but I still end up crying.

I love listening to music that makes me cry. So, I think that writing music that’s unapologetically or unashamedly emotional is definitely something that I feel rings true to my approach. There are things I love about music that are really interesting, texturally, conceptually, or cerebrally, and all that kind of stuff is cool. I also add some of that to my music, but I need the music to make me feel something and move me emotionally. That’s something that I always strive for.

AD: We’re focusing on Origin here, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that you have had many other projects this year. How do you compartmentalize? Do you find that the ideas inadvertently bleed together and inspire each other?

KB: Luckily, these things have been pretty spread out. The Last Repair Shop is a short that I directed; I’ve been working on that for four years, so that’s something that has been in the works for a long time. I started work on The Color Purple a few months before they started production. I finished that in February of this year. I spent a year and a half working on that. And Origin happened in a time when I didn’t have anything else. It was after Haunted Mansion and The Color Purple. It’s one of the things where it’s exciting to have these things come out around the same time, but they represent, in some cases, years of work and process. And I think that because I’m responding to what I’m watching and each project calls for something different, that’s what I love about my job as a composer; each one helped me get into different headspaces.

I feel like each score might be building on my abilities. I have a different level of pride for each project because I feel like I can hear growth in myself.

AD: Looking back, can you see how Origin has led to your overall growth? Is there a specific place where you had to push yourself? Or something you can now clearly see as a turning point?

KB: Yeah, I think with Origin, the biggest thing that I recognize is the power of complex simplicity.

There are so many moments in that film that it requires five, six, seven-minute pieces of music, which is already rare for projects I’m working on. Often, it’s just music with a voiceover or music with imagery. And it’s also very, very heavy emotionally.

It was all about finding that balance of making sure the music was emotional enough while not making it feel melodramatic or too understated. But, many of those pieces have this deceptive simplicity where it’s like, ‘Oh, this is just these two instruments playing for seven minutes.’

And it feels like they’re playing the same thing, but you don’t get tired of it because it’s not just a loop. There are a lot of things I discovered with this film where I could write something that continued to evolve and evoke, even though there was a version of a pattern. That was really fun concept to play with for this one.

AD: I remember when I left Origin, I felt like, ‘Okay, five, ten years from now, there are going to be a lot of movies that are going to try to do what Origin did, and we’re going to look back, and Origin is going to mark the start of something.’

I wonder if you feel the same, both in terms of the film, but also in the music and your approach.

KB: I just hope I served the movie well enough for the score to have any sort of impact as people return to the movie.

I totally agree with you. I have never seen anything like this, and I’m excited to see other people find different ways to tell stories based on inspiration from this. If there’s anything that people gather from the music, hopefully, it is how much it serves the story and serves the people that the story is meant to represent.