They shoot, they score

My review for Radio Times of the new, feature-length documentary Score (released on DVD 2 April in the UK)

 

SCORE (2016)
RATING: ★★★★
DIRECTOR: Matt Schrader
STARRING: Hans Zimmer, John Debney, Tyler Bates et al
CERTIFICATE: PG
RUNNING TIME: 93 mins
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: US
AVAILABLE: DVD

 

Matt Schrader’s first feature Score leads the slender field of documentaries about the work of film composers. Anyone whose interest runs deeper than humming the Darth Vader march will delight at the sheer who’s-who lined up for this tantalising insight into an artform that leading light Hans Zimmer reminds us keeps the world’s studio orchestras in work, while director James Cameron refers to the score as a movie’s “heart and soul”. Talking heads seated on swivel chairs on laminate-floored control rooms offer downhome wisdom like, “Bernard Herrmann had balls!” (Guardians of the Galaxy’s Tyler Bates) and “The reverse echo is really cool” (Scream king Marco Beltrami, who’s placed an old piano on the roof of his Malibu studio and wired it to a water tower for The Homesman). With its Kong-to-Jaws potted history out of the way, Score luxuriates in footage of crack musicians at Abbey Road giving life to Duel of the Fates from The Phantom Menace and Patrick Doyle cheerfully bashing out the Harry Potter Waltz on his piano. The notes of a motif from Lord of the Rings appear graphically onscreen, but apart from that, it’s sheer indulgence for audio-cinephiles yearning to see Tom Holkenborg call up the drums from Mad Max: Fury Road and play them on his keyboard. Zimmer speaks for every insecure composer when he imagines panicking, “You’d better phone John Williams, I have no idea how to do this!”

The abridged version, on the page:

Advertisement