![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.jwfan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/MusicbyJW-poster.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cMusic by John Williams\u201d probably would\u2019ve been a pleasure to watch even if it hadn\u2019t gone as deep into the process of scoring as it does: a glorified supplement, made enjoyable mainly by the way it hits our nostalgic triggers. What makes it special is that it truly cares about the nuts and bolts of marrying pictures to music and understands how to explain the finer points to people who aren\u2019t musicians – Full review at RogerEbert.com<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Sometimes, the documentary even feels rigorous. Thanks to his ample access to Spielberg\u2019s home movies, Bouzereau is able to give us behind-the-scenes treats like footage from various scoring sessions, as well as a few precious outtakes like music-free clips from\u00a0Jaws<\/a><\/em>\u00a0and unused pieces from\u00a0Star Wars<\/em>. But I wish there were more moments like the one where Williams blends musical theory and rhetoric to explain why the five-note central theme of\u00a0Close Encounters<\/em> is more effective than the pages of additional five-note combinations he experimented with. – Full review at The Hollywood Reporter<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cMusic for John Williams\u201d is intended more as a greatest-hits reel \u2014 the documentary equivalent of a flattering coffee-table book \u2014 than an attempt to better understand the man. The film does mention an early tragedy: the unexpected death of Williams\u2019 wife Barbara Ruick from an aneurysm in early 1974. And it touches on a tricky moment in his career, when he (temporarily) resigned from conducting the Boston Pops a decade later. While that incident reminds how film composers aren\u2019t taken as seriously in the classical music community, Coldplay frontman Chris Martin calls Williams \u201cthe biggest pop star ever.\u201d – Full review at Variety<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n A richer and more curious film might not frame those as rhetorical questions, but \u201cMusic by John Williams<\/a>\u201d is \u2014\u00a0understandably \u2014\u00a0too awed by its subject to ask anything more about him. Less a celebrity bio-doc than it is a hyper-bloated version of the tribute reel the Oscars might play before giving Williams a lifetime achievement award (do they still air those things?), Bouzereau\u2019s movie immediately concedes that Williams is just a simple fella from Flushing who happens to have scored our collective imagination. And I mean\u00a0immediately<\/em>: The very first thing we hear is Steven Spielberg saying that \u201cJonny is too nice of a guy to write such genius music.\u201d –\u00a0Full review at IndyWire<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n The best moments are when Williams sits at his piano and picks out his tunes. For Jaws, says Spielberg, he was \u201cexpecting something tremendously complex and [what Williams played] was almost like Chopsticks with a couple of fingers \u2026 I thought he was joking.\u201d Williams explains why his five-note phrase<\/a> at the heart of Close Encounters of the Third Kind works. \u201cThere is something spiritual about it \u2026 it\u2019s a conjunctive phrase that ends with an \u2018if\u2019 or a \u2018but\u2019\u2026 creating an expectation with the fifth degree of the scale.\u201d A piece of manuscript paper with 50 other rejected five-note phrases show his workings. Spielberg marvels at the nuances and detail of his writing: in the snake sequence in Raiders of the Lost Ark, \u201cJohnny was scoring for individual snakes,\u201d he says. – Full review at The Guardian<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Bouzereau isn\u2019t looking to pull tales of tragedy out of Williams. Biographical information is fairly uneventful, following the young man as he moved from New York to California under the care of his parents, with his father, Johnny, a working musician. Williams was raised in a musical household, and this influence paired him to the piano, developing his skills throughout his formative years. He joined the Air Force in the 1950s, eventually called on to use his gifts to compose for films while in Canada, brought into a world previously experienced by his dad. \u201cMusic by John Williams\u201d also explores the creation of his own family life, eventually becoming a parent to three kids (daughter Jenny is an interviewee), while his first wife, Barbara, died suddenly in 1974, leaving the workaholic to manage a household. This loss is as close as Bouzereau gets to pain here, finding Williams still reluctant to discuss the moment that drastically changed his life. – Full review at Blu-Ray.com<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n