DOCUMENTARY REVIEW: Music by John Williams

MUSIC BY JOHN WILLIAMS– 4 STARS

In the new Disney-backed Lucasfilm documentary Music by John Williams, many dignitaries are assembled to speak on the greatest film composer of all time. All, naturally, have very kind things to say about the lovely and tireless 92-year-old artist who deserves every bit of this chronicle and celebration. Yet, it’s when those peers, partners, colleagues, and fans speak beyond the usual considerate platitudes and define something profound about John Williams that one realizes the true and lasting impact of the man and his work.

LESSON #1: THIS IS THE BIGGEST POP STAR OF ALL-TIME– Of all the people appearing in Music by John Williams, it might be Coldplay frontman Chris Martin who says it best. Without a hint of facetiousness or doubt, he declares John Williams “the biggest pop star of all-time.” And when you really think about it, Chris is dead right. Regardless of genres, a great performing artist, if they’re lucky, has a handful of–maybe a dozen at best–songs or pieces that stand the test of time. John has his handful just from his cache of Star Wars themes alone, let alone the entirety of his resume which spans Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Superman, the Indiana Jones series, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, the Harry Potter franchise, the Olympic Fanfare, and more. When you hear a John Williams theme, you know it and also know it’s his.

Music by John Williams sets to finalize that very lesson towards its climax when it follows Williams making his annual concert appearance at the famed Hollywood Bowl. You have a nonagenarian–not a hot, twentysomething fad–selling out nearly 20,000 seats. This may be the 1950 North Hollywood High School graduate’s “hometown” show, but John Williams has sold out concert halls anywhere he goes for the better part of seven decades. Those Los Angeles folks, young and old, are there to watch a senior citizen wave a conductor’s baton for an orchestra to play–not pop ditties that will be hot on YouTube for a year– but instrumental hits from movies that, in some cases, are over a half-century old. There are no giant stage pyrotechnics. Instead, the audience, with their glowing toy lightsabers in hand, provide the only necessary bells and whistles for the show. It’s a sight to be seen that Williams and the film itself notices with high regard.

LESSON #2: POPULARIZING CLASSICAL MUSIC– Dig into that popularity angle deeper for moment. Sure, John Williams’s work may be rooted as a commericalized tangent of classical music, but who else has so many pieces of their work that are instantly recognizable to so many people across multiple generations? What other film composer matches his success range across multiple subgenres listed above? Going beyond the cinema realm, who else has had so much of their work beloved and studied by new students entering the musical field? Who else has had their work repackaged and replayed as house-packing repertoire programs for band, orchestra, symphony groups across the world as often and for this long? No matter what question is asked, the answer continuously is no one. The amount of joy and reverence John Williams has brought with his music is unmatched.

Directed by prolific documentary producer Laurent Bouzereau (Five Came Back), Music by John Williams tracks the biographical roots of the composer and conductor in a linear career order. He began as the son of jazz percussionist Johnny Williams before finding his own musical aims through schooling and time in the U.S. Air Force Band in the early 1950s. Finding himself more talented at writing music than performing it as a concert pianist after the service, John began making a living in the entertainment industry as a performer, orchestrator, and composer. Television work in series like Lost in Space, M Squad, and The Time Tunnel was his bread-and-butter through the 1960s before breaking out with film scores for William Wyler’s How to Steal a Million, The Valley of the Dolls, Goodbye Mr. Chips, the two westerns The Reivers and The Cowboys, a trio of Irwin Allen disastic flicks (The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno, Earthquake), and The Fiddler on the Roof– the latter of which won Williams his first Oscar of five in his career.

LESSON #3: THE MUTUAL BENEFITS OF CREATIVE COLLABORATION– The 1970s would bring John Williams together with his greatest collaborator: Steven Spielberg, beginning with scores for The Sugarland Express and Jaws. Their close working relationship is the thickest career section examined by the Music by John Williams, and rightfully so since it contains the deepest well of Williams’ hits. The artistic confidence and creative understanding the two shared is the stuff of its own moviemaking legend. It goes without saying that neither would have the impact and popularity of their their careers without the other.

Steven Spielberg is one of the producers of Music by John Williams and appears on-screen often as the hosting guide for composer’s many career cornerstones and the primary talking head of the film. Also, the notorious home-video fan shared many samples from his collections of behind-the-scenes footage to bolster Bourzereau’s documentary with rich archival footage of Williams’ many layers of his creative process and working locations like backlot recording studios or the Boston homebase at of the Tanglewood Institute. Joining Spielberg for their own rounds of recounted appreciation and industry insight include fellow Music by John Williams producer Ron Howard, filmmaker J.J. Abrams, composer Thomas Newman, the aforementioned Chris Martin, and equal superfan Seth McFarlane. It’s a marvel Bouzereau and his crew tell the story of John Williams while he is still working, writing, conducting, and performing to this day.

LESSON #4: SEE AND FEEL A MOVIE THE WAY JOHN WILLIAMS DOES– When you see and hear anyone talk about John Williams in the documentary, especially Spielberg, they remark about how John provides a distinct character of musical sound that he finds within each movie project laid before him. Williams shows that he has long known movies to be the escapist engines of empathy they are meant to be. Whether its in the archival footage rehearsing on soundstages or his own reminiscence on his home Steinway piano, watching him interpret and bring to life his feelings with, at first, simple piano cues and, later, wide-reaching and complex symphonies written by hand without a speck of assistive technology is an awe-inspiring sight in Music By John Williams. If only we all could see movies as tenderly and thematically as he does.

With every chapter, Music by John Williams defines and stamps the maestro’s brilliance, even if the running time could be doubled or tripled to peel back even more “how does he do it” storytelling and clinical breakdowns from film to film and era to era. Plenty of cinephiles would love to see all that, but only so many nuanced moments fit alongside the big ones in one feature-length documentary. Even comprised as the parade it is, the Disney+ film is a fitting biographical tribute to the artist who could have rested on his laurels a quarter-century ago and still been an all-timer worthy of nonfiction hero worship.