Giuseppe Tornatore
Ennio

Ennio - A tribute to an artist who will never leave

"The world of Ennio is not yet fully discovered"

Ennio, by Giuseppe Tornatore, is the tribute that the Sicilian director dedicated to the figure of the most famous and important Italian composer of the last half-century and a bit more. Bound to Morricone by an indissoluble artistic, human, and affective relationship from the times of Nuovo Cinema Paradiso until the end of the Maestro's life, the Sicilian author creates a touching documentary film that is above all a journey inside us and the emotions that this great artist has been able to give through his art.

"Ennio managed to blend prose and poetry together" Bernardo Bertolucci

MORRICONE: THE STORY OF AN ARTIST BOTH CULTURED AND POPULAR WHO REVOLUTIONIZED MUSIC AND CINEMA

Through interviews with diverse artists, as well as with Morricone himself, Ennio reconstructs the trajectory of one of the most significant and influential artists of the last century. From his early years as a trumpeter alongside his father in occupied Italy, to the conservatory and his training as a composer; from the fundamental collaboration with his former schoolmate Sergio Leone, to the Oscar for The Hateful Eight of his longtime admirer Quentin Tarantino.

And in every aspect, the genius, initially also misunderstood, emerges of what, in effect, was the first film score composer to become an icon, a reference point, a star. For the first time on par with a director, a screenwriter. An added value. With Morricone, the creation of a character, a scene, a shot, happens through music. Music, for the first time, creates the image, and not vice versa. Morricone made the soundtrack an element that represented a fundamental aspect of the work.

Even bringing it, at times, to be the main attraction of the film, surpassing the value of the film itself.

Morricone made the soundtrack an art. The music of the film independent from the film itself. No longer a simple accompaniment, commentary on the images or something accessory and secondary. An exceptional and extraordinary cultural revolution.

In the history of cinema, there is a before and after Morricone. As only for the greatest.

THE TALE OF AN ITALY THAT NO LONGER EXISTS

Ennio is also, inevitably, the tale of a past Italy, of an entire world of the past. Through a plunge into memory, the evocation, poignant in hindsight and the sad times we live in today, of the time when Italy was at the center of the cultural world and cinematic avant-garde. When Italian cinema was a source of admiration and inspiration worldwide. Thanks, besides the aforementioned Leone, to the various Elio Petri, Dario Argento, Bernardo Bertolucci. Not mere provincial cinematography as it is today.

Even though sometimes, especially initially, the risk of hagiography is touched, Ennio remains free from any emphatic rhetoric towards a character so relevant. Instead, it portrays the image of a man exceptionally dedicated to his work, reserved, who also had to face the painful process of overcoming the inferiority complex and shame in scoring films. Although today it might indeed seem strange or paradoxical, that of the composer of music for cinema was considered a true stigma in the academic and intellectual environment. The result of cultural snobbery, a prejudice that, in the end, was also part of cinema itself. And that if today is largely - though not completely - overcome is precisely thanks to an artist like Morricone.

THE DOUBLE SOUL, CULTURED AND POPULAR OF AN EXPERIMENTER AND AVANT-GARDIST

Morricone, starting from the bottom, brought a great charge of experimentation to his art. Already when he was a simple arranger of national-popular songs for musicians like Gianni Morandi or Caterina Caselli. Yet the Roman Maestro often felt trapped by the pop music world first and the cinematic one later. But he managed to revolutionize the internal codes, prevailing, until he was finally considered unanimously as a genius even by those who had criticized him. Bringing a lesson of extraordinary dedication and humility.

THE LEGACY OF ENNIO AND WHY THIS MAN DESERVED IMMORTALITY

Ennio is a peculiar object. This project started years ago, and indeed every intervention is in the present, as if giving a sense of a collective celebration of a world pop icon. Finally released only two months ago (and now available on Tim Vision, before the home video release set for May) in theaters, about a year and a half after the Maestro's death, it has the flavor of both a passionate tribute (which it fundamentally is and as it was born) and an elegy, and above all, it results poignant in how it always talks about Morricone in the present. Tornatore chose not to add anything posthumous, no reference to Morricone in the past. Thus giving the sense of a well-deserved immortality. As if Morricone had not left us in that July of 2020. But was still among us.

And so it is, in reality. Because his is an art that has so deeply marked the lives of millions of people across many generations, that there is a sense of the Eternal when rethinking and re-listening to the notes of Once Upon a Time in the West, The Mission, Once Upon a Time in America, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion. And hundreds of others.

MUSIC AS ONE OF THE FEW UNIVERSAL LANGUAGES

Because music and images are perhaps the only truly universal and transcendent languages existing in the world.

Cinema is the art that more than any other is capable of penetrating the unconscious, influencing dreams, hopes. Representing fears, anxieties, diseases, the moods of epochs. And Morricone created the music that served as the soundtrack for all this. Of all these multiple and complex sensations. Of the movement of the soul. If we have been able to be moved later thanks also to other immense artists such as Ryuichi Sakamoto, Joe Hisaishi, Hans Zimmer, Max Richter, it is thanks to Morricone. To how this great Italian has been able to change the course of the History of two arts.

If this is not deserving a place among the greatest of all time.