Ennio: The Maestro

Around the world with the maestro’s career. It's hard to fault a recapitulation of Morricone's work for bowing to genius without any criticism (and at least in the area of conflicted willfulness there would be plenty of themes). And yes, it's a mix of talking heads (fortunately mostly Morricone) and archive footage, with the honourable exception of the perfectly staged prologue. But it's perfectly edited to the music as it flies through the world, so that one fascinating theme/detail/look behind the curtain follows another. This, ironically, it’s the biggest problem. It's engrossing for two and a half hours, but by the end you have the insistent feeling that it should have been a multi-part documentary series, because to skim the surface of a ninety-year life, a career spanning over five hundred films, not to mention concert tours, the impact on pop culture or classical and popular work outside of film, is too damn little (the personal life is summed up in two minutes and the "daily routine" is barely covered in two sentences). It is a collection of key moments and interesting facts, not a complex and comprehensive documentary about the life and work of a classic. Aside from the constant tributes to genius, and Ennio's quiet reminiscence, the only unifying themes are his lifelong inferiority complex, dissatisfaction with his work, and his constant search for recognition in "serious" circles. It's delicious, but it's an appetizer, not a main course. (21/10/2022)

A meticulous and thorough biography of the master, which for my taste spends far too long charting his early youth and far too little on his best-known work, with which he captivated much of the music world. The fact that they completely omit any mention of some of his most famous oeuvres and instead go to great lengths to name and analyse in minute detail early works that are unknown to most viewers is hard to understand. (17/12/2023)