With exclusive archive footage and interviews with his greatest collaborators, Music by John Williams is a proud tribute to the composer, but lacks originality in its treatment.

Whatever our age, it’s inevitable that John Williams’ music has crossed our path at some point. It’s bound to have filled us with wonder, thrill or emotion at some point. And it’s with little hesitation that we place the man among the greatest contemporary composers. It is therefore with great respect and admiration that Laurent Bouzereau embarks on a documentary recounting the man’s personal life and the compositions that have spanned his career and made him the legend that he is.

Inevitably, with a career as long as Williams’, Bouzereau had to make choices when it came to talking about the composer’s private life, his career, and the impact of his compositions on the world. But Music by John Williams never really seems to commit itself to a specific choice, preferring to give a very global portrait of these three elements, but which inevitably results in a rather superficial documentary.

This rather curious choice is perhaps due to Williams’ – entirely understandable – reluctance to spill the beans on his personal life, forcing Bouzereau to rely on other personalities such as Steven Spielberg, George Lucas or composer friends to paint a portrait of his overall work. But all this is refuted by the presence of family members such as his daughter Jenny Williams, who vividly recounts her life with her father and the difficulties she and her two brothers went through.

But one big winner emerges from this documentary, other than Williams himself, and that’s Steven Spielberg. Obviously, their relationship has had a major impact on both men’s careers, and both might not be here if the other hadn’t crossed his path. But none of this is new to us; we already know the impact that the few masterful notes of Jaws had on cinema, or the compositions of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Music by John Williams spends more than half its time exploring this relationship and the legendary Star Wars composition. Although the composer’s comments – still extremely lively for his 92 years – are a joy to listen to, they don’t represent anything concretely new or unpublished in and of themselves.

However, Laurent Bouzereau’s documentary has its best moments when it explores the composer’s frantic beginnings in television, then in film for Hollywood studios, revealing Williams’ involvement in films we never knew he was involved in. It’s in these passages that we understand that Williams didn’t get where he is just by meeting influential directors, but through years of hard work on numerous studio projects. You can clearly sense in these extracts a man’s dedication and sacrifice to his work and his art, tirelessly exploring new genres for new productions.

Music by John Williams then explores the man’s many instantly recognizable compositions from the 80s, 90s and 2000s, with directors such as Ron Howard, James Mangold or Chris Colombus providing commentary. But like many documentaries attempting to portray almost larger-than-life figures, Bouzereau’s work quickly falls into a succession of rather superficial commentaries revolving around phrases like “ This composition is truly magnificent and is a central part of my film, Williams is a genius ”. All this is undoubtedly true, but it’s a little thin.

Because once Music by John Williams has spent a significant amount of time with Jaws, Star Wars or Indiana Jones, the rest of his career is quickly brushed over in a sometimes jumbled fashion, with film extracts and brief commentaries. Bouzereau builds on an ode to the composer with this documentary, and it could have been an opportunity to showcase the beauty of his lesser-known compositions, unhampered by a 25min section on the success of Star Wars.

Nevertheless, credit must go to Bouzereau for the archival access he was able to obtain to complement the interviews with Williams’ greatest collaborators. Music by John Williams is packed with fascinating archive footage of the composer at work in the editing rooms during films such as Jaws or E.T., or during his performances as a conductor in Boston. Inevitably, the documentary manages to strike a chord with us with Williams’ compositions during his ^45th performance at the Hollywood Bowl. There’s a kind of moving magnitude to seeing the man play his greatest compositions to an audience after so many years.

With all the material and people at his disposal, it’s clear that Laurent Bouzereau couldn’t fail with Music by John Williams, especially given the opportunity to have long and fascinating interviews with the composer. And while it’s always a pleasure to see the man talk about his creative process in his collaborations with Spielberg and Lucas, there’s still a feeling that we’re talking about the same popular guys on the block and not the others who had the chance to collaborate with the man on works that are surely just as interesting.