If you knew precious little about Ennio Morricone, unarguably one of the greatest composers who lived in the last 100 years, Ennio, a 150-minute documentary about him, will open up big wide worlds of music and movies for you. A good chunk of the history of film music falls right off the screen, and you will be left wondering from where to start catching up – the vast amounts of stunning music he left behind (500 of them for films and more than a 100 classical works) or the movies themselves. The films and its visuals are so entwined with Ennio’s music, it seems hard to separate one from the other once you have watched them unroll. The documentary, made by Giuseppe Tornatore – the same man who made Cinema Paradiso (another film Ennio composed the music for) – is a thorough and absolutely riveting account of the maestro’s life, screened at the ongoing International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala (IDSFFK).
Even if you had not heard Ennio’s name before, there is little chance that you have not listened to one of his many widely-popular background scores. Simply listen to the theme of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly – Clint Eastwood’s 1966 Western – and you’d know. He shows up – Clint does – during the documentary, as one of the many people giving their accounts of working with Ennio or sharing their appreciation for the composer. Clint and director Sergio Leone had famously worked together in a number of Westerns through the 60s, 70s and 80s, and Ennio was inevitably on board for nearly all of them. They were classmates, Sergio and Ennio, and had a long association that lasted till Sergio’s passing in 1989.
Ennio lived longer, all the way till July 2020, when the news of his death – resulting from injuries of a fall – still shocked the many, many admirers all across the world. His work continues to influence musicians of many varied genres – the vocalist and writer of the heavy metal band Metallica, James Hetfield, among them. They have opened every one of their shows since 1983 with Ennio's 'Ecstasy of Gold' from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
Watch: Trailer of Ennio
Ennio might have started with a trumpet – passed on by his trumpeter dad with the advice to use it to provide for the family – but the maestro didn’t stop there, obviously. He trained under Goffredo Petrassi in western classical music, and became a regular on the stage. Petrassi and several other classical musicians looked down upon Ennio when he began composing for films. Even Ennio had felt “guilty” about it, he says in the documentary. He would tell his wife Maria at the beginning of every new decade that he would stop in the next 10 years, but couldn’t. In the end, “I stopped saying anything”, he says in the documentary.
Giuseppe’s method seems simple enough – just let the man talk and let the others comment upon each of his famous works, interspersing some of the film scenes and music. But oh no, it is a lot, lot more than simply baring a great life lived. Music grips you tight, because even the words they speak turn into tunes. What really makes you wonder is how everyone who speaks about his music remembers every note so well. It is not just this great composer who could remember every one of his vast collection of tracks, but also the people who worked with him. The directors hum the tra-la-las and pum-pum-pums used for a certain situation of a certain movie. It is like a dialogue that flows from screen to screen as Ennio begins humming, and the others finish, from somewhere else.
Ennio’s very expressive face is a puddle when he talks about the moments that had pained him. He is as honest as it gets, no sugarcoating the bitterness. If he didn’t like a song he did, he simply states it. And then adds, “but of course that’s the song the director chose”. Humour flows in, just like every other emotion.
Watch: Ennio receives the Academy Honorary Award
Only, the Oscar came far too late. There were a number of nominations – six, in fact – before he won the award for his score in 2016, for a Quentin Tarantino film, The Hateful Eight. They realised it was getting late in 2007, and presented him the Academy Honorary Award, says one of the speakers. At that age – he was nearly 80 then – he was not expected to continue composing the way he did. But Ennio kept going, wonderfully. His whole life was music, says one speaker. It wasn’t, you’d feel, when you see the way he talks about Maria, the woman who stuck with him through everything, and to whom he began playing the tracks he composed firsthand to, for an honest opinion. The man was full of love and full of feeling. He’s got to be, if he could make music like this.