Seventeen thousand people in the Hollywood Bowl cheer as an unremarkable-looking man in a white jacket with a neat grey beard and bright blue eyes walks on stage. John Williams raises his baton and the Los Angeles Philharmonic begin the theme for Star Wars’s Imperial March. Thousands of lightsabers beat time along with him. The atmosphere crackles.
Williams’s music is part of our collective psyche. Superman, Harry Potter, ET, Jaws, Indiana Jones, Schindler’s List – how many other films are so instantly recognisable from a few notes of their soundtracks? Laurent Bouzereau’s documentary celebrates the legendary film composer, now 92. The music, with its lush orchestral richness and unashamed emotion, is front and centre. Musicians Chris Martin and Yo-Yo Ma and directors including George Lucas, Ron Howard and Chris Columbus are among the stars offering paeans, while interviews with his most famous collaborator Steven Spielberg (a co-producer here), are the film’s backbone, the affection between the two men manifest. Williams himself is a benign, wry and unassuming figure. He is always scribbling away, says his daughter Jennifer. “He expresses himself through his music,” his grandson Ethan Gruska says.
