When the Oscar roll was called out last month, one presumably satisfying moment came when Leonardo DiCaprio “broke his spell” and joined the winner’s circle as Best Actor for The Revenant. Really, though, the award for longest-overdue statue anointment was in the film composer department: This was Ennio Morricone’s year, when one of the masters — and mavericks — of the film composition world over the past half-century, going back to his delectably weird and wonderful Sergio Leone “spaghetti western” scores of the late 1960s, won his first actual Oscar (apart from a token Lifetime Achievement award in 2007), for work on Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight.
Love the film, hate it, or shrug with indifference, but Morricone’s music is one of its high points. It is a romantic yet mischievous and still experimental feat by a creatively fiery veteran — now 87 years old — and a loving director/composer pact reminiscent of Bernard Herrmann’s riveting final score for Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver.
When it comes to music and the movies, especially in America, the field sometimes feels less like an art than a craft in crisis, under pressure from outside forces. Hollywood score aesthetics too often lean happily into formulaic hackwork and eschew innovation, partly connected to the limited musical knowledge or courage of directors, and the deeper matter of the general public’s fear of creative or “challenging” music.