Ennio
A metronome ticks, and a benign-looking man lies on a rug in his tracksuit bottoms and repeats some exercises. Cut away and he is conducting, alone in his study, where every surface overflows with papers. Music swells. There is something strangely moving, terribly personal, about the epic tune in contrast to the image on the screen of a very old man standing among the banal mess of a creative life.
Morricone, born in 1928, wrote over 500 scores for film and television, from Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Westerns, to Dario Argento’s giallos, to Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso, to Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, for which he finally received an Academy Award in 2016 after decades of being nominated and disappointed.
Giuseppe Tornatore’s Ennio is, from its opening sequence, a beautiful portrait of iconic Italian composer Ennio Morricone. The documentary works around snippets of a central conversation between Tornatore and Morricone. Tornatore is off-camera, his voice and any questions are not included – Morricone is telling his story to the camera, but there is clearly someone behind it. The result is a successfully meandering exploration of Morricone’s motivations, and the way in which his imagination works.
The removal of the inquisitor from the scene allows Morricone to explain himself at his own pace, without being audibly flattered or pressed on any particular subject. The documentary also presents over 70 interviews, gathered over five years, with directors, musicians and collaborators including Clint Eastwood, Joan Baez, Hans Zimmer and Bruce Springsteen, which intersect with Morricone’s account. They are interwoven with archive footage of his family life and concerts, and clips from films containing his scores. The documentary’s release follows Morricone’s death in 2020, so has become a tribute.
Morricone initially describes growing up in Rome and being forced to play the trumpet by his father, then seeking praise from his highly strung tutor at the conservatoire. As a young man he played at comedy shows to bring home the bread and also made experimental music with ‘traumatic’ sounds, often made from everyday objects – a method utilised later in his film scores.
A conflict between his dual identity as experimental musician and film composer runs throughout the film, but is not over-dramatised. Morricone comes across as neither humble nor arrogant, simply absorbed by his work and his way of seeing the world. He hums his tunes to explain points regularly, mimicking instruments – his impression of the coyote sound in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly is truly delightful.
Morricone’s great legacy as a composer is pretty much undisputed among those interviewed. No one has a bad word to say about such a groovily innovative yet reserved character. There are humorous recollections of lulls in his versatility and “eh, basta!” episodes when he refused to work on projects – Tornatore’s included – then changed his mind. But his few mistakes, gilded by hindsight and no little collective reverence, become idiosyncrasies.
With any less genuine fondness expressed by all involved, and any less careful representation of it on Tornatore’s part, the effect could be saccharine. As it is, none of the sentimentality is forced, and so the overall tone is warm and transportive, in the ‘Once upon a Time…’ style of the stories Morricone shaped with his music.
Although it celebrates Morricone’s particular genius, this documentary is not greedy with the nostalgia it generates as it casts light on so many parts of 20th century culture. Throughout, you are reminded of other brilliant aspects of those films, those songs referred to – the implicit impetus is to watch or re-watch them. Ennio is discreetly generous.
