STRIKE UP THE BAND

John Williams: The Greatest Film Composer Ever Gets the Tribute He Deserves

The new documentary “Music by John Williams” is a rapturous love letter to the man who wrote the soundtrack to modern pop culture: “Star Wars,” “Jaws,” “Superman,” and so much more.

Few figures in modern movies are more important—or greater—than John Williams, the composer whose work has not just thrilled, enchanted, and moved generations, but has become ingrained in our personal and cultural DNA.

Williams’ genius is second to none, such that without his contributions, the classic films he’s scored—including Jaws, Star Wars, Superman, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List, Home Alone, and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone—wouldn’t be the same. He’s a titan in his field, a musician of seemingly limitless range, dexterity, and creativity, and his brilliance is epitomized by the fact that his most famous pieces are instantly recognizable, hummable, and capable of bringing a smile to one’s faces and a tear to one’s eye.

Simply put, there may be no cinematic artist more deserving of a lionizing documentary than Williams, and that’s precisely what he receives in Music by John Williams, Laurent Bouzereau’s deservedly fawning non-fiction tribute, which is in theaters and on Disney+ Nov. 1. Driven by interviews with Williams, his many illustrious collaborators, archival footage of him at home, in his studios, and on stage, and plentiful snippets of his iconic musical themes, it’s a celebration of a man who enhanced some of the most influential movies of the past 50-plus years and, in the process, fashioned the soundtrack to millions, if not billions, of people’s lives.

“A brilliant guy who really understands the relationship between pictures and sound” is how George Lucas describes Williams, and he would know, since Williams’ score for Star Wars is as beloved as it is ubiquitous. Lucas isn’t exaggerating when he claims that “I truly believe that the soundtrack is half of the movie. Star Wars basically would not be Star Wars without Johnny Williams’ music.” Then again, that could be said about every film to which he lent his talents. There’s less terror in Jaws, awe in Jurassic Park, nobility in Saving Private Ryan, and tragedy in Schindler’s List without his orchestral tunes. Consequently, there’s no debate about his peerless excellence and significance; it’s a universally held fact, understood by anyone who’s ever encountered his compositions.

Coldplay frontman Chris Martin isn’t far off when he dubs Williams a preeminent pop star, given that the composer’s music has touched so many that it’s as well-known as any Top 40 hit. Be it Darth Vader’s imperial march, the five-motif theme designed to communicate with aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, or Elliott and E.T.’s bicycle-flight theme, Williams’ scores are inextricably related to the movies in which they’re featured, and Music by John Williams is an effusive salute to his breathtaking imagination and skill.

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There are no critical voices heard throughout, with every renowned talking head waxing rhapsodic about the excitement of partnering with Williams or the breadth and depth of his career. Though that renders it a tad one-note, it’s the fundamentally correct note, considering that—with all due respect to Ennio Morricone, Bernard Herrmann, Elmer Bernstein, Henry Mancini, Nina Rota, Leonard Bernstein, Lalo Schifrin, Hans Zimmer and many other giants—no composer in the medium has ever put together a body of work to equal his.

Praise is ceaseless in Music by John Williams. However, Bouzereau isn’t foolish enough to present his subject as merely a naturally divine prodigy. Rather, with the 92-year-old Williams helping to narrate his own tale, the film rewinds to the composer’s early days growing up in a family of musicians led by his dad Johnny, a jazz drummer and percussionist whose shift into playing on movie scores provided Williams with his first glimpse into this particular world.

Born in Queens, New York, Williams and his clan moved to California when he was a teenager, and from an early age, he was encouraged to diligently practice the piano—sometimes playing five or six hours a day and all weekend long. The environment in which he grew up provided him with a musical education as well as the work ethic required to succeed, and the impression relayed by this bio-doc is that Williams, far from destined for the heights he’d eventually reach, nurtured his artistry through persistence, curiosity, experimentation, and repetition.

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Music by John Williams illustrates that Williams earned his stripes by gradually developing and expanding his abilities, and it simultaneously commends him for his love and support of traditional orchestral arrangements, which had begun falling out of favor in movies when he crafted his Star Wars opus. By that point, he’d already won two Academy Awards, for Fiddler on the Roof and Jaws. Yet his partnership with George Lucas sent him into an even loftier stratosphere in which he’s remained ever since, thanks to gems such as the soundtrack to Richard Donner’s Superman—a masterpiece that instantly defined the character, no matter that the superhero had existed for 40 years.

JJ Abrams, Ron Howard, Lawrence Kasdan, Kathleen Kennedy, Seth MacFarlane, Branford Marsalis, and Itzhak Perlman all applaud Williams in Music by John Williams, and no one has nicer things to say about him than Steven Spielberg. The feelings, unsurprisingly, are mutual, with Williams admitting that his initial meeting with the director (for his first film, 1974’s The Sugarland Express) was “probably the luckiest day of my life,” and their countless team-ups are front-and-center throughout the doc.

At the same time, Bouzereau emphasizes that Williams was more than merely a movie composer, highlighting his 1980-1993 tenure as the conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra, his long-standing relationship with Tanglewood and the Los Angeles Philharmonic (including annual appearances at the Hollywood Bowl), his more adventurous original symphonic oeuvre, and his additional triumphs, such as writing the themes for NBC’s Nightly News, Sunday Night Football, and Olympics broadcasts.

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Williams’ place in cinema history is so enormous and inarguable that Music with John Williams barely lists his specific accolades; awards are ultimately secondary to the immense impact he’s had on American pop culture and classical music. That he’s still going strong is a testament to his amazing vitality, and yet even when he hangs up his baton, his legacy will live forever.

Nick SchagerEntertainment Critic

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