Ennio

The great composer Ennio Morricone gets the epic documentary he deserves in Giuseppe Tornatore’s hugely entertaining and enlightening look at the maestro’s life and work. Tornatore had Morricone score 13 of his films—beginning with the classic ‘Cinema Paradiso’ in 1988—and is therefore well-suited to the task. Alongside the ample commentary of Morricone himself, we are treated to the perspicacious insights of such directors and musicians as Clint Eastwood, Quentin Tarantino, Oliver Stone, Roland Joffé, David Putnam, Terrence Malick, Wong Kar-wai, Dario Argento, Marco Bellocchio, Bernardo Bertolucci, Joan Baez, John Williams, Hans Zimmer, Bruce Springsteen, Pat Metheny, and Quincy Jones. This is a film lover’s delight, pure and simple.

‘In addition to nuts-and-bolts musicology, it offers real engagement with a complicated character, endearingly stubborn and self-effacing, whose inventiveness changed both his chosen field (“absolute” music) and the one, film scoring, he entered only reluctantly… “Ennio” leaves one wanting to re-watch dozens of movies, dig up more for the first time, and scour the internet for Italian pop records that may never have been released on these shores.’—John Defore, The Hollywood Reporter