The Glance of Music (2021)

 

An extremely moving documentary about Ennio Morricone that came out very unfortunately a little bit after Morricone's own passing in 2020, probably due to the notorious long gestion time needed by Giuseppe Tornatore. This is an amazingly emotional film about Morricone's quest to create a new path for music in films, and more importantly his struggle to win approval from his very own teacher and colleagues in classical music, who only until A Fistful of Dollars and especially Once Upon a Time in America could finally admit that Morricone's works for these films are also music at its best, at its purest, and not just another "prostituting work" by a classical maestro for the film industry for "a fistful of dollars". Due to the very moving nature of Morricone's works, this film could easily bring the audience to tears, especially during the special sequences when Morricone and his colleagues retold his writing for the pinnacles of his film music career including the aforementioned A Fistful of Dollars, The Mission, and especially Once Upon a Time in America, or Joan Baez's Here's to You. Too bad that even though this film was directed by Tornatore, he saved very little time for his very own masterpiece Cinema Paradiso, the soundtrack of it - written by Morricone of course is probably among my most favourite (alongside with the music of Once Upon a Time in America). An amazing, amazing film nonetheless, which will stay with me for a long time I am very sure.