I was catching up on the nominees for Original Score and they’re all great. Justin Hurwitz is some kind of genius and his score for Babylon is just insanely good. I don’t know where he came from or how he is this talented, but his (egregiously not-Oscar nominated) score for First Man I listen to, even still, constantly. And how did he come up with the score for Babylon?
Volker Bertelmann’s score for All Quiet on the Western Front is largely responsible for one of the masterpieces of this year. This film is pure art on every level. Every piece of it works in perfect harmony to evoke and express the irrational trauma of world war.
Carter Burwell’s magnificent score for The Banshees of Inisherin is a score that doesn’t feature as prominently as the scores for Babylon or All Quiet on the Western Front, but that’s mainly because it competes with the film’s other score: its lyrical, brilliant writing from Martin McDonagh. The words spoken by the actors comprise much of how this film sounds but the music is excellent too.
And Son Lux’s score for Everything Everywhere All at Once is propulsive, thrilling, unpredictable, and alive. The music pulls us along from scene to scene, keeping pace with the fast-moving action and dialogue. The film looks, sounds, and feels like a hurricane of chaos with calm in its eye, its Everything bagel center.
But it’s John Williams’ score for The Fabelmans that ends up being the most mind-blowing of all. I often listen to Williams’ scores for Spielberg’s films throughout their long careers together, and it’s really hard to wrap my mind around the idea that he could be this consistently good for this long. With 53 nominations, Williams is behind only Walt Disney for the most nominations in Oscar history. But he hasn’t won since 1994 with Schindler’s List.
Williams also won for E.T., Star Wars, and Jaws. I ask you this: has there ever been a better film composer?
Six years ago, Steven Spielberg paid tribute to Williams at the AFI for one of the many tributes in his honor:
At 91, his musical gifts are as alive as ever with his score for The Fabelmans. Williams knows Spielberg so well he was able to customize this particular score to match Spielberg the man as well as to capture the film’s ruminative, bittersweet tone. The score for The Fablemans is a bit more stripped back from Williams’ grand orchestral works of yesteryear and reliant more on piano solos. But it’s still incredibly impactful and emotive work.
I think you have to have a cold, black heart to not award Williams for this deeply moving, affecting score that is easily one of his best. I mean — just listen to it. No one can do what he does. He is the best there is and the best there ever was.
So how do we thank John Williams for what he has given us? How can we possibly? We can’t. Every time I listen to any piece of music by him it stops me. He has gotten better as he got older and has not lost a step.
His score for The Fabelmans is, I think, a love letter to Spielberg, a tribute in their 50th year of collaborations.
Steven Spielberg should be winning Best Director and John Williams should be winning Best Score. The Oscars have long been a game of myopic impatience and immediacy, and not necessarily a race that is ever well-considered. I personally think awards should go to those who have spent years becoming great, not necessarily to those who are just starting out. But it doesn’t really matter what I think.
What I do know is that with very few exceptions, no other composer’s music has been right there, helping to shape my life for my entire life. All of the scores from this year are very very good, but when you listen to the score from The Fabelmans it’s easy to hear the unsurpassed talent and skill of John Williams.
Without John Williams, there is no shark theme in Jaws. There is no way to communicate with aliens with five notes in Close Encounters. There’s no Raiders’ March for Indiana Jones, no Jurassic Park, no E.T., no Schindler’s List — and certainly no Star Wars. His music has provided generations of moviegoers with unforgettable suspense, awe, wonder, and heartbreak for over half a century. The sustained, titanic impact his work has had on cinema is simply incomparable.
So here’s to you, John, the greatest there ever was and the greatest there ever will be. It should be the pleasure of every Academy member to vote for you.
Easily my favorite of the year…
My favorite:
https://youtu.be/Omd9_FJnerY
Sentimental tributes to anyone who are not the actors wouldn’t move the needle (unless the race is really competitive).
On the Oscar ballots, they don’t state the names of the nominees but only the movies in contention. While some/most voters might know who the composers are for which movie, the tendency would be to pick the movie they think is deserving or they like.
Narratives only effect the actors’ race. Besides, it’s hard to create a narrative for someone who had already won five Oscars. I mean, what would the sixth do for his life/happiness?
I felt it to be, as the heading suggests, a love letter to an icon. The posts aren’t always designed to move the needle.
I wouldn’t have said anything if it weren’t for the last sentence.
You’re not saying anything we don’t already know. And John Williams himself certainly isn’t campaigning for a sixth Oscar. But in interviews he does highly value the recognition from the Academy. And the fact remains is that he hasn’t won in 30 years despite continuing to churn out quality score after quality score – his career didn’t end after Schindler’s List.
Furthermore, a “living legend” narrative absolutely worked in favor of another composing giant, Ennio Morricone, back in 2015. So yes – sometimes the tributes actually take hold with enough voters in below-the-line categories.
Ennio Morricone, it was his first.
The reason Williams hasn’t won in 30 years is because he has 5 already.
It’s an honor to be nominated and that should be enough which I’m sure he feels that way.
“The reason Williams hasn’t won in 30 years is because he has 5 already.”
Except that would imply voters would know that he’s on the ballot, which then contradicts your assertion that they don’t know the composers for each movie, much less their history at the Oscars. So which is it?
Nice and deserved words for the best composers of original scores of all time. He is the person who has lost the Oscar more times, 46 times, and several of them unfairly, only for the reason that he ‘already’ had 5 awards. It’s insane. Academy please give him his elusive sixth Oscar. This is the right moment, nothing else.
I barely noticed the score in The Fabelmans, LOL!. As great as John Williams is, I think his recent collaborations with Spielberg, including Lincoln and The Fabelmans, were really not awards material.
P.S. Williams should’ve won for Memoirs of a Geisha. The music touches you deeply and just sort of melts your heart!
Sasha, your love note to John Williams was music to my ears. At 91, he still really knows the score, and I loved his simple and poignant music to Spielberg’s fabulous ”The Fablemans.” Williams has written the soundtrack to so many of our most memorable movie moments, chalking up 53 Oscar nominations. And he has 5 wins, and probably should’ve had a score more.
I think this is Ennio Morricone’s case – The Hateful 8 – and JW is taking The Fabelman’s’ Oscar… case of a combo to give JW his final win (over 50 nominations, only 5 wins!!!) and at the same time, not leaving The Fabelmans emptyhanded, giving it a somewhat showy award.
It’s easy to say Williams deserves an Oscar for any work he does. I have scores of CDs of his stuff, a genius influencing other composers and glad he’s not retiring just yet.
I think Williams’ score for De Palma’s The Fury (1978) may be his most underappreciated. In a bloody movie, his music rushes like gushing blood, unstoppably, like fate closing in on the characters, relentlessly. It’s as if fear is spilling all over you as you listen. It’s deliberately over scaled, feverish, operatic. He goes for broke in a way I haven’t heard in any of his other scores.
Williams’ “Hook” and “Always” are great, very underrated.
John Williams should have won another Oscar fifty years ago for co -writing the title song of Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye with the great Johhny Mercer . Unfortunately it wasn’t even nominated ! He and Spielberg have done great work over the years The Fabelmans isn’t one of them !
A lovely tribute to a brilliant composer.
That said, the award should go to the artist / film that DESERVES it due to MERIT and work in the year he or she does. It’s not career or lifetime awards and age or experience has nothing to do with it.
Mr William’s work is brilliant in The Fabelmans. Past or career don’t matter when it comes to a single years award (Or should matter but sadly we sometimes get saddled with AMPAS going for such vote, like last year for Ms Chastain).
Really nice tribute Sasha. Hits all the right notes! (sorry, I had to….)
“Steven Spielberg should be winning Best Director and John Williams should be winning Best Picture.”
Aww Sasha you made a boo boo but food for thought here …IF there is and nobody earnt that right more than great Jonh Williams has to be said….a movie ABOUT JOHN WILLIAMS maybe even by his lifelong collaborator in Spielberg in future then you may be right John Williams film about the greatest composer of all time in my lifetime anyway…SHOULD WIN BEST PICTURE..
I think the madness and ludicrous extra hectic compressed awards season lovely Sasha has unfortunately seen us have lapses in concentration with emotions running high thorugh no fault of your own you made a boo boo there…
no best picture contender for film bout John Williams ..yet you mean he should win best original score at oscars ey?
But i like you humour even if it unintended a wonderful tribute indeed fit for the king of composers no doubt Sasha.
Hurwitz grew up in Eastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean Shore countries. His mother was a ballet dancer. So I think it’s safe to assume he grew up with classical influences, and some Middle Eastern and Traditional Jewish influences. I’ve never studied Hurwitz nor have I seen Babylon. But a quick listen to some songs confirms this. Since the music is from the 1920’s I assume that he just listened to a ton of music from that time period and gave it a contemporary flair. And you can assume there are a ton of jazz influences as well.
Track 4 is very 1920’s.
Track 5 of the soundtrack Coke Room, definitely has some traditional Jewish folk influences.
There are Kinescope tracks which pretty much duplicate ragtime and the music that is indicated. Track 13 is especially Jewish influenced.
My favorite quick listen was Track 7 Miss Idaho, which has some early Jazz influences, a Middle Eastern riff
And so on, it’s all quite good. If you want me to be honest though, it sounds like he was deeply influenced by two recent Broadway Musicals, Pierre and Natasha and The Band’s Visit. He doesn’t sound like either, but all three go back to early folk music from Russia and the Middle East which to many American Ears, may as well come from a different planet.
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I give John Williams credit for creating a catchy line here and there, but I’ve never been impressed with an entire score of his, they all kind of eventually drift into the same kind of generic film blandness. Just listen to the closing credits of SPR or Jurassic Park for example. They don’t measure up. It’s all very classical-lite, nothing interesting, nothing inventive, nothing inspiring. They definitely don’t work on their own. Certainly one could do better picking random second rate contemporary classical music.
When you think of great music soundtracks of all time, you get high quality classical music in Lawrence of Arabia, or original sounds in Chariots of Fire, or maybe just some beautifully composed music in Requiem for a Dream or Music combining different influences for a fresh sound in Beasts of the Southern Wild. Or completely avante garde sounds of The Social Network the tension filled There Will Be Blood.
I think Justin Hurwitz’s score for babylon was a pure musical masterpiece and deserves to win. But i suspect it will go to either AQOTWF or EEAAO. Leaning towards EEAAO since the academy seems to be in some sort of trance and completely hypnotised by it.