‘Ennio’ Review: Ennio Morricone, the Maestro of the Movie Soundtrack, Gets the Entrancing Documentary He Deserves
09.02.2024 - 20:28
/ variety.com
Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic If would be hard to name an artist in any medium who illustrated Flaubert’s famous maxim of creativity (“Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work”) better than Ennio Morricone. Morricone, who died in 2020 (at 91), was certainly one of the greatest composers of movie soundtracks who ever lived. But even if you consider him next to his fellow giants (Bernard Herrmann, John Williams, Nino Rota, Hans Zimmer, Max Steiner), Morricone scaled his own wild peak, inventing his own kind of beauty, his own transcendent cacophony.
Yet you would never have guessed it to look at him. “Ennio,” directed by Guiseppe Tornatore (“Cinema Paradiso”), is a 156-minute portrait of Morricone built around an extensive interview with the composer. (It also includes comments from a murderers’ row of filmmakers and artists.) The movie opens on a beating metronome, which seems to set the orderly, clockwork rhythm of Morricone’s life.
Strolling into his ornately furnished living room, he walks quickly, not like a man of 90, and his voice is light and direct. We hear a barrage of quotes from people paying tribute to his talent (Bernardo Bertolucci, Bruce Springsteen, Dario Argento, Pat Metheny, Clint Eastwood), and someone says that Morricone has the quality of always being himself…and always being someone else. “We’re talking about a genius,” says another.
But it’s Lina Wertmüller who says the most interesting thing. “A very peculiar man,” she recalls, adding, “He was crazy. That’s for sure.” The Morricone we see in “Ennio” does not look crazy.