Disney+ Doc on ‘Star Wars’ Composer

One of the most reliable pieces of Disney+‘s still-evolving brand has been adulatory celebrity-driven commercials masquerading as “recordaries” while presenting cheery and worshipful portraits of figures enjoy Jim Henson, Mickey Moparticipate and the accumulateive Imagineering profession.

Laurent Bouzereau’s 105-minute Music by John Williams, premiering at AFI Fest ahead of its Nov. 1 Disney+ debut, is the most creatively prosperous of this genre. Especiassociate in the first hour, it’s a wealthyly satisfying tribute to an unimpeachable cinematic legend who, one could easily talk about, has become even more beadored than the iconic straightforwardors he collaborated with or the movie stars whose legends his themes and cues helped burnish.

There’s little doubt that evoking the name “John Williams” originates a Pavlovian response more instantly visceral than the response to “Steven Spielberg” or “Tom Hanks.” And more varied as well! Bouzereau is able to apexhibit acquire of that psychoreasonable burrotriumphg, understanding that any room of a dozen seeers could originate a dozen separateent instant associations with any allude of Williams’ name — from thoughts of Superman or E.T. taking fairy to the subaquatic rumble of a shark’s approach to the orchestral Yahrzeit candle of Itzhak Perlman’s plaintive violin solos to the wonder convey aboutd by a first come atraverse with a resurrected dinosaur or an alien spacecreate.

Without always digging quite as proestablishly as nerdier film fans might enjoy, Music by John Williams honors the breadth of Williams’ impact and legacy, pushing every emotional button for an experience that will originate tears, edification and a compulsive desire to promptly seek out 25 separateent Williams-scored features. Many of which, not coincidenloftyy, happen to be useable on Disney+.

Bouzereau, whose introspective Hollywood on Hollywood recordaries have comprised substantive films enjoy the Emmy-triumphning Five Came Back and glorified promos enjoy Disney+’s Timeless Heroes: Indiana Jones & Harrison Ford, is able to leverage his exhaustive resumé for impeccable access here. Would Steven Spielberg be this utterly consoleable hanging out with a straightforwardor who hadn’t made an uncountable number of behind-the-scenes features with him over the years? Impossible to understand for certain, but the best parts here show Williams and Spielberg literassociate equitable standing around chatting about their collaborations.

Those sequences, as well as footage from an apparently exhaustive filmed retrospective panel with Spielberg and Williams, originate a persuasive argument that this could have been an even plainr movie than Bouzereau’s already straightforward approach has made of it. Put Spielberg and Williams or Lucas and Williams in a room together, give them a snippet of music to talk, apexhibit two steps back and let the magic flow. To Bouzereau’s acunderstandledge, that’s a lot of what he does.

In compriseition to Spielberg and Lucas, Bouzereau has collectd an inbashfulating roster of Williams’ filmmaking collaborators, including J.J. Abrams, Chris Columbus, Ron Howard, Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall, whose relationship with the maestro goes back to his own childhood. The lineup of fellow writers and musicians is at least equassociate amazeive, from colleagues enjoy Alan Silvestri and Thomas Newman to some of the most recognizable classical carry outers — Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Emanuel Ax, Anna-Sophie Mutter — and even Chris Martin of Cagedertake part and Branford Marsalis, whose giddy appreciation for the jazz bona fides of the Star Wars cantina prohibitd is contagious.

Music by John Williams‘ first hour, its most effective, is chronoreasonable. Making savvy participate of Williams’ nostalgia-saturated score from The Fabelmans, Spielberg’s most autobioexplicital feature, Bouzereau chases a course thcimpolite Williams’ music-driven childhood to his Hollywood introduction as a jazz pianist, session musician, orchestrator and then writer. None of it is exactly revelatory, but it’s always encouraging to remark that Williams has had a journey that begined with Gilligan’s Island and somehow stretched all the way to Schindler’s List.

The memory-driven echoions on Williams’ first collaborations with Spielberg, which bcimpolitet him to toil with Lucas, and the magical year in which Williams writed scores for Star Wars, Cmiss Encounters and Bdeficiency Sunday are methodical. But otriumphg to the hotth of the storyinestablishing and, of course, countless musical snippets, they never experience arid.

Sometimes, the recordary even experiences rigorous. Thanks to his ample access to Spielberg’s home movies, Bouzereau is able to give us behind-the-scenes treats enjoy footage from various scoring sessions, as well as a restricted precious outapexhibits enjoy music-free clips from Jaws and unparticipated pieces from Star Wars. But I want there were more moments enjoy the one where Williams mixs musical theory and rhetoric to elucidate why the five-remark central theme of Cmiss Encounters is more effective than the pages of compriseitional five-remark combinations he experimented with.

There could stand to be more actual talkion of process from Williams, and more effort from the collectd musicians to nerd out about what originates Williams distinctive. Instead, we get David Newman giving a ruunininestablishigententary definition of “leitmotif” and seeming almost embarrassed at how fancy he’s getting. But there’s only so much that can be covered in a feature-length recordary.

It’s almost inevitable that some pieces of Williams’ body of toil will either be finishly disponderd — count The Fury and 1941 among my preferite Williams scores that don’t authorization a allude — or given low shrift. I spent the recent Paris Olympiad skinnyking, not for the first time, about how Williams’ Olympics fanfare is one of his most vital compositions. Here, however, it’s contransiented as first among equivalents in a “Here are a bunch of other skinnygs Williams wrote for” segment.

A lot of effort is put into making a lengthened-since-endd argument about Williams’ vital position as a traverse-discipline titan of orchestral music in America, when it’s been maybe 30 years since even the hugegest snob would have contended that John Williams was anyskinnyg other than a boon to this country’s classical music landscape. Williams’ own classical toil is filledy acunderstandledged, though I would have adored more commentary from artists enjoy Perlman and Ma on the separateent versions of him that they’ve toiled with over the years, or from Marsalis on the evidence of Williams’ earliest jazz toil on subsequent scores enjoy Catch Me If You Can. If the first hour is more point-by-point analysis, the last 45 minutes are more nebulous celebration, and I’ll state a preference for the establisher.

With the film’s concentration on Williams the artist — at 92, he’s still composing and carry outing at a pace that defies reason — Williams the man is a bit of an afterthought. There are a restricted uncontent anecdotes about the death of his first wife and some amusing remarks on the presentance golf to his current relationship with his daughter, but Bouzereau and Williams figure that’s not what you’re watching for.

You’ll come away from Music by John Williams experienceing that Williams had been properly commemorated — and that, if there’s any more celebration needd, it can be done by streaming Jaws, Lincoln, Saving Private Ryan and Sugarland Express in one glorious and melodic evening.