John Williams is obviously and without question one of the greatest film composers who ever lived, but that still feels like an understatement. The case could be made like this no one Across his range of expertise – from Jerry Goldsmith and Bernard Herrmann to Ennio Morricone and Toru Takemitsu – he only comes close to matching the sheer breadth, diversity and cultural impact of Williams' contributions to cinema (not to mention his talents on Sunday Night ) Soccer,” NBC News and the Olympics). In fact, Williams' size is So Obviously and naturally, Laurent Bouzereau's lovingly simple documentary about him just needs to sit back, keep his mouth shut and let the music do the talking. What else can you say about a 92-year-old workaholic who claims his inspiration comes from heaven? How do you challenge what Steven Spielberg calls “the purest form of artistic expression I have ever experienced from a human being”?

A richer and more curious film might not frame these questions as rhetorical questions, but “Music by John Williams” is – understandably – too impressed with its subject to ask more about him. Less a celebrity biopic than a bloated version of the tribute role the Oscars might play before giving Williams a lifetime achievement award (do these things still air?), Bouzereau's film immediately admits that Williams is just a simple guy from Flushing who happened to capture our collective imagination. And I mean immediately: The very first thing we hear is Steven Spielberg saying, “Jonny is too nice a guy to write such brilliant music.”

That's about as deep and controversial as it gets in the course of a film, which runs through Williams' greatest hits in chronological order, following the pace set by the composer as he goes – along with a small selection of talking Heads – reflects on the origins and consequences of his most immortal scores. Needless to say, it's absolute nirvana for anyone who has a Proustian relationship with the theme from Jurassic Park or hears the sound of the films themselves in the opening song of Star Wars. While “Music by John Williams” is by no means a film worthy of John Williams' music, I suspect its EPK-level complexity befits a virtuoso who concludes: “Music is enough for one life, but one Life is not enough for “music.” Williams insists that the music is bigger and more interesting than him, and Bouzereau is happy to take the maestro at his word.

It helps that the music really, really, Really great – some of it is so formative for cinephiles of a certain age that when you listen to Williams reflect on the process of writing, you end up feeling like you're listening to a first-hand account of Moses' conversation with God to receive Mount Sinai. Bouzereau is so eager to get to the good stuff that he rushes through the biographical details, going over his subject's childhood – and his later time with the US Air Force Band – before slowing down and recounting how Williams got into the He stumbled into the world of film after initially setting his sights on the jazz scene. (Williams admits he was never much of a movie guy, although some of the best parts of this documentary illustrate how much he was inspired by watching rough cuts of films like “ET” and “Home Alone.”)

“Music by John Williams” only found a stable rhythm when Spielberg – a very willing participant in this documentary – contacted the composer in the early 1970s. Williams would later describe their first meeting as “the happiest day of his life,” and from the start Bouzereau privileges their collaboration so much that the harmonica motif from “The Sugarland Express” gets more screen time here than pretty much anything else Williams did had done up to that point (a resume that already included working with Robert Altman and William Wyler, not to mention an Oscar for Fiddler on the Roof).

From then on, Bouzereau plows from one film to the next, his film barely breaking its stride to acknowledge the sudden death of Williams' first wife on the set of “California Split”; Her daughter is there to describe the devastation, but the composer himself simply admits that he put himself into his work, and Bouzereau has no interest in exploring it further. Most viewers won't either, because they'll find it hard to do anything but smile and shake their heads while listening to Williams and Spielberg discuss the Jaws theme or remember how they hit their heads against the wall at the end of “Close Encounters” of the Third Kind.” “Star Wars” fans may already know every last detail about the making of “A New Hope,” but it is still exciting to hear how George Lucas adapts to his initial dissatisfaction with the first draft of the musical piece “Binary Sunset” is recalled, only for Bouzereau to follow it with the legendary reference that Williams went home and wrote that evening.

Hearing these scores so close together, one recognizes the orchestral majesty that Williams brought to a medium that threatened to transcend; If this documentary has a unifying theme (and I'm not entirely sure it does), it would have to be Williams' unwavering resistance to a future that celebrates the now at the expense of the eternal. A self-confessed classicist, Williams is impressed by the sheer diversity of film music that exists today, but it pains him to think that we may never produce another Brahms. Listening to Williams' theme song from Schindler's List (to me the greatest piece of music he ever wrote) and watching Kate Capshaw burst into tears as she remembers hearing it for the first time it's tempting to think we've already done it.

The timeless sincerity of his work is so crucial to the enduring appeal of films like Superman and Raiders of the Lost Ark that it feels like he's only been so good for so long because he writes music that's meant to be last forever. (Unfortunately, Williams' reverence for the great masters wasn't enough to impress some members of the Boston Pops, who literally hissed at the idea of ​​being conducted by someone they viewed as a glorified popcorn salesman.) Williams was a perfect fit Spielberg because the young filmmaker was determined to bring real film music back to the cinema at a time when soundtracks were all the rage, and it's remarkable to reflect on how their retrograde sensibility affected so many of the Hollywood's most brilliant future prospects.

It's sweet that Chris Martin shows up and explains why Coldplay always takes the stage to the theme of “ET,” and that Seth MacFarlane is such a Williams fan that Peter Griffin sometimes hums his music on the couch, but all that What needs to be said about the Maestro's undying relevance can be read in the opening remarks of Rey's theme song from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which sound as if they were on a desert planet a long time ago from a galaxy far, far away, but have also brought forth something entirely new in this generation of blockbuster entertainment (for better or for worse). “How does he do that?” someone asks. “Music by John Williams” doesn’t have the slightest clue. This long and indulgent document is content to immerse us in the mystery of it all, if only because it understands that people in the centuries to come will ask the same question.

Grade: B-

“Music by John Williams” is now available to stream on Disney Plus.

Want to keep up with the film from IndieWire? Reviews and critical thoughts? Subscribe here to our newly launched In Review newsletter from David Ehrlich, where our chief film critic and reviews editor rounds up the best new reviews and streaming picks along with some exclusive musings – all available only to subscribers.