Okay so a documentary about film scores sounds a bit dry and boring right? Well you’d be very wrong, it’s fantastic! A real insight into a world that moves us, toys with us, helps us experience films in a way that we simply couldn’t do without music. Hans Zimmer is a revelation. Talking about the excitement of creating and the fear of getting started, what am I doing? Can I do this? It’s fun too though, The Pink Panther, James Bond, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, music that makes you smile, that transports you. Bernard Herrmann’s work with Hitchcock, moving away from tunes into something so much more. The way music can enhance and even be a character in itself or simply provide a skeleton for the visuals to flesh out. There are some downsides, James Cameron proving once again what an uncultured moron he is, but really it’s a celebration of musicians, of composers, of studios, the technicians, of film and emotion. There’s a wonderful feel of play to the whole thing. That music needs wiggle room and shouldn’t, can’t be perfect, it needs space. “If everyone in the orchestra hit the same note on the page, it would sound terrible. It would be like putting auto-tune on Etta James. It would take all the soul out of it”. Yes there’s a lot of the expected Williams, Zimmer, Elfman, Newman, but most of this is narrated by the non superstar composers working today and there’s definitely the suggestion that things are once again changing with people like Reznor, Greenwood, Mansell working today. Making the whole thing very positive, not just a golden age nostalgia fest, the future is just as exciting. Oh and needless to say, watch this with the volume way up... it sounds incredible!
7/10
