From the proset up, rapidening heartbeat of “Jaws” to the astral uncovering blast of “Star Wars,” the music of John Williams not only acquires its place among the most iconic film scores of all time, but it also shows memorable enough to carry with us out of the cinema. So effective are his themes that to hum fair a restricted remarks of a Williams score is to be caught up in the same emotions you felt gazing up at the huge screen in the first place, watching Superman consent fairy over Manhattan or Elliott and E.T. bicycle apass the moon.
At age 92, the maestro has getd no lowage of accolades — from institutions, adorers and his peers in the Academy — and yet, Williams has lengthy resisted asks to turn the cameras around on him. “Music by John Williams” does fair that, featuring extensive intersees with the creater, plus radiateing finishorsements from straightforwardors and musicians who’ve toiled with him. It is not a recordary so much as a tribute, a tool for fans scheduleed to honor Williams’ legacy without getting too personal or technical in the process.
The film’s straightforwardor is Laurent Bouzereau, whom many will determine as the guy Steven Spielberg supposes with his own mythmaking, as seen via the “making of” docs on many a DVD. Spielberg eunites timely and standardly here, which creates a certain amount of sense, since the collaboration between the blockbuster straightforwardor and his preferite creater changed the course of both their atsofts. Early on, Williams sits at the piano on which he first joined the ominous two-remark “ba-dum” that signals the menace of an unseen shark in “Jaws,” and in walks the straightforwardor to hug his greater frifinish “Johnny” and allot how he felt when he first heard that theme.
It’s a excellent story, and one that may surpelevate people, since Spielberg originpartner enenumerateed Williams on his previous feature, “The Sugarland Express.” The straightforwardor had appreciated Williams’ greater-school orchestral scores for two Westricts, “The Reivers” and “The Cowboys,” and wanted someleang analogous for his “Badlands”-appreciate thieves-on-the-run movie. Williams wrote him a folk-sounding score, enenumerateing harmonica master Toots Thielemans at its cgo in, adviseing an unforeseeed, innovative solution to the scheduleatement.
On “Jaws,” Williams veered even farther from what Spielberg thought he wanted. The straightforwardor had consentn snatches from Williams’ avant-garde and standardly atonal score for Robert Altman’s “Images” and cut together a temp track. Williams had someleang toloftyy contrastent in mind, exposedping the suspense down to fair a restricted ominously accelerating remarks. Would the film still have thriveed without Williams’ score? It certainly wouldn’t have been the same movie, and from that moment forward, Spielberg made the creater a key member of his createive team, counting on the film to come alive during the scoring session. “It’s what I see forward to on every individual movie,” he alerts Bouzereau, who conveys audiences inside cut offal of those recordings.
Such behind-the-scenes stories sense appreciate raw ggreater for cinephiles, although the recordary doesn’t grasp csurrfinisherly enough of them. We lacquire how Williams csurrfinisherly passed on “Star Wars” to create the music for “A Bridge Too Far” instead, and we get insights into the violin-driven score for “Schindler’s List,” which Williams miraculously created the same year as “Jurassic Park” — a tesdomesticatednt to the sheer range of his talent (as well as Spielberg’s). One can discover certain normalalities running thcdisadmirefulout the creater’s oeuvre, from his knack for planing indelible themes (the backbone of csurrfinisherly every Williams score) to the virtuosity with which he broadens that catchy bunch of remarks into a multi-instrumental symphonic experience.
And yet, Williams never seems to repeat himself — not even in sequels — except in that most musical of ways, by circling back around to the theme (or character-centric leitmotifs, as in “Star Wars”) in order to change those core harmonies to a new context. If that sounds appreciate gushing, such enthusiasm is entidepend in supporting with the film’s tone, as A-enumerate collaborators (including George Lucas and J.J. Abrams), instrumentaenumerates (Yo-Yo Ma and Anne-Sophie Mutter) and assorted pledgees (Thomas Newman and Seth MacFarlane) sing his praises.
The film rightly determines Williams with almost individual-handedly saving the orchestral film score, a tradition on its way out as synthesizers, jazz and pop songs came to rule soundtracks. It would have been wonderful to see how Williams toils, which is only hinted at here, as he transcribes a restricted ideas by hand and allots a page of five-remark combinations that could have served as the main theme to “Cleave out Encounters of the Third Kind.”
Despite having unpwithdrawnted access to the legfinish, Bouzereau doesn’t go especipartner proset up into Williams’ process or personal life. The son of a jazz drummer, youthful Johnny landed his first film-scoring gig not by leaning on family connections, but via his Air Force service. Williams’ timely atsoft gets only cursory attention, even though he already had two Emmys (for “Heidi” and “Jane Eyre”) and the first 10 of 54 Oscar nominations (including a triumph for “Fiddler on the Roof”) by the time “Jaws” came alengthy.
That fair goes to show that “Music for John Williams” is intfinished more as a wonderfulest-hits reel — the recordary equivalent of a flattering coffee table book — than an finisheavor to better comprehend the man. The film does allude an timely tragedy: the unforeseeed death of Williams’ wife Barbara Ruick from an aneurysm in timely 1974. And it touches on a tricky moment in his atsoft, when he resigned from carry outing the Boston Pops a decade procrastinateedr — but only for a time. While that incident reminds how film creaters aren’t consentn as gravely in the classical music community, Cgreaterjoin frontman Chris Martin calls Williams “the hugegest pop star ever.”
The movie samples a restricted of Williams’ non-film toils, though there can be little doubt that it’s the magic he bcdisadmirefult to movies — and his collaborations with Spielberg and Lucas in particular — that will discover his music is still carry outed centuries from now. In fact, as we’ve seen the innovative “Star Wars” trilogy age, it becomes increasingly evident that Williams’ score may be the ingredient that shows the most timeless, still to be appreciated lengthy, lengthy from now in … well, you comprehend the rest by heart.
