As a piece of film-making, this documentary is cumbersome, repetitive and ploddingly conventional – all traits that were anathema to its subject, the late Italian film composer Ennio Morricone (1928-2020), best known for his collaborations with Sergio Leone, but who also worked with everyone from Bertolucci to Tarantino.
As a tribute to the man and his legacy it’s fascinating stuff. Giuseppe Tornatore, who commissioned Morricone to write the score for his 1988 film Cinema Paradiso, directs this exhaustive and fervently appreciative film, tracking the maestro’s journey from son of an itinerant trumpet player, to member of an avant-garde noise collective (“We wanted to make traumatic sounds”), to the lord of musical misrule behind many of the quirkier excesses of 60s Italian pop. All this, however, was a mere prelude to the main act of Morricone’s prolific career, as a creator of scores that could tell a story as eloquently as any screenplay.