‘Music by John Williams’ Review: An Unabashed Celebration of One of Cinema’s Greatest Composers

There were great cinema composers before John Williams and there will be great composers after him. And yet, through his seven-decade career, he towers over everyone else. His music is not only iconic, but the movies we revere as classics wouldn’t have acquired such legendary status if not for his scores.

“Jaws” without John Williams isn’t “Jaws.” “Star Wars” without John Williams isn’t “Star Wars.” Although he only handles the music, the composer has left such a mark on cinema history that he makes a case as co-author of some of Hollywood’s biggest triumphs.

Director Laurent Bouzerau gives the full spotlight to the composer in the new documentary, “Music by John Williams.” Bouzerau is fully comfortable in his mode as celebrating Williams and his legacy, which is fine. I’m not sure I was looking for someone to “rip the lid off” the subject, and while it would have been nice to glance at some lesser-known scores to examine why they didn’t have the same impact as his other work, there’s still a clear window into Williams’ process, his history and what makes him a unique figure among composers beyond his overflowing trophy case.

The reason you can call this movie “Music by John Williams” is because even the most casual film fan knows who Williams is. They may be hard-pressed to name any other composer, but they know who wrote the music for “Jaws,” “Star Wars,” “E.T.,” “Indiana Jones,” “Jurassic Park,” “Schindler’s List” and so on. This makes Bouzerau’s film a bit of a deeper dive where we have Williams and his family talking about his upbringing, his influences, why he stopped going by “Johnny Williams” (it’s a fun and surprisingly valid reason) and more. You also get insights into his process like how he still writes his scores by hand even though in a digital age composers can have notes appear on a screen when they’re working. 

Learning what makes Williams stand apart better elucidates his distinction as a composer. Williams, by his own admission, is not a movie buff, and he’s also not swayed by temp tracks. In one anecdote, Steven Spielberg relates how on “Jaws,” he temp tracked the movie to Williams’ score for Robert Altman’s 1972 psychological horror film “Images,” but Williams said that the high, staccato strings weren’t appropriate for a movie where the terror is what lurks beneath. For that, you needed something on the low end of the scale, which is how we got the iconic “Jaws” theme.

But what makes the film clear as a celebration rather than an interrogation is that Bouzerau largely talks to filmmakers, or at the very least, directors are the primary lens outside of Williams’ and his family, through which we view his work. On the one hand, that’s helpful as you would certainly want someone like Spielberg explaining his long history with his go-to maestro. But then Bouzerau adds in George Lucas (sure, “Star Wars”), Chris Columbus (“Home Alone,” “Stepmom” and then “Harry Potter,” makes sense), J.J. Abrams (two “Star Wars” sequels), James Mangold (a single “Indiana Jones” sequel) and Ron Howard (“Far and Away”… and that’s it), and you see that it’s Williams through the lens of not only directors, but directors in the Lucasfilm/Amblin orbit. 

There’s an occasional talking head outside of these filmmakers like Chris Martin of Coldplay, Seth MacFarlane, or critic and filmmaker Elvis Mitchell, but the movie is surprisingly thin on other composers, which is a shame. Perhaps the thinking is that Williams has outlived most of his composing contemporaries like Jerry Goldsmith, James Horner, Elmer Bernstein and Maurice Jarre. There’s a bit here from Alan Silvestri and Thomas Newman, but why not get insights from Michael Giacchino, Hans Zimmer, Howard Shore, Rachel Portman or Alexandre Desplat, just to name a few? By leaving fellow composers aside, the documentary almost seems to place its subject above his craft rather than part of its history.

That doesn’t make “Music by John Williams” a bad movie, but it does render it a somewhat superficial one as its primary mode seems to be a lovefest for scores you already appreciate.

I was thrilled when the film devoted a bit of time for “Catch Me if You Can,” not only because it’s one of Williams’ best scores, but because it exists outside his better-known works. While I wish the film got more into the weeds of where Williams and his work exists in comparison to those who preceded and those who followed him, this is still the kind of inoffensive celebratory piece that will have you eager to revisit his most beloved scores while gaining a bit more insight into their creation.