I liked Kites a lot. But, a day later, I’m still so disappointed in one aspect of the film, it merits its own post.

A haunting, ethereal musical theme pervades much of the movie. The song is beautiful, and it augments the movie’s most emotional sequences. You can listen to a snippet of it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekk0G8oa7N4#t=02m13s

There’s only one problem. Kites composer Rajesh Roshan didn’t write it.

I don’t mean Roshan may have accidentally used a melody that he’d heard somewhere before. I mean he took an entire song, pretty much note for note, from another movie’s soundtrack.

As I wrote in my review of the film, “[t]he song is identical in melody, key, and instrumentation to ‘Aniron (Theme for Aragorn and Arwen),’ written by Enya for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.” However, Enya is not properly attributed as the composer anywhere in the film’s credits (source: IMDb).

Here’s a clip of the original song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CT3zbqpUb5s#t=1m29s

Maybe there’s not a lot of overlap between fans of Hindi films and fantasy geeks like me, and Roshan figured he wouldn’t get caught. Fellowship didn’t even make a million dollars during its run in India (source: Box Office Mojo). Or perhaps Roshan was just being brazen, and he didn’t care if anyone found out.

In either case, he can’t claim sole credit for Kites‘ music.

Update: I’ve heard that it may not be Roshan who’s responsible for appropriating Enya’s song. It may be Salim-Sulaiman, a pair of brothers who composed some of the background music for Kites.