A little Knight music: "Hans Zimmer & Friends: Diamond in the Desert"

Tempted as one might be to cite the Christopher Nolan effect, it turns out we have Johnny Marr to thank for the cinema's pre-eminent musical maximalist getting his own Beyoncé or Taylor Swift-style concert movie. Early on in Paul Dugdale's Hans Zimmer & Friends: Diamond in the Desert, we learn that it was Marr - who collaborated with Zimmer on the last Bond soundtrack, and whose son Nile plays guitar with the composer's live band - who first suggested Zimmer take a show on the road and thereby reconnect with his pop roots; the film's subject, in what isn't his only display of humility before these cameras, insists he'd have been quite happy staying at home writing music. Video killed the radio star, but the movies have made a touring act of him. What we've ended up with here is a two-and-a-half-hour record of that live show as performed at the Coca-Cola Arena in Dubai, where it was lapped up by a snap-happy crowd doubtless grateful to have something to do beyond idly blowing their personal fortunes in shopping malls and getting burnt up by the sun. 

The Zimmer who fronts this show is a jovial cove, bescarfed and beaming behind his synths, cornily courteous to his hosts ("the future is here"), generally self-effacing (of his Pirates of the Caribbean scores, he insists "I just bashed them out") while dutiful in singling out his collaborators for individual praise. Together with several of the most photogenic musicians in existence, he works through the hits - or most memorable cues - from the Dunes, the Batmen, Gladiator, Inception and the like; by way of additional VFM - this being one of those "event cinema" boondoggles for which you somehow have to pay extra - these crowd favourites are interspersed with filler sitdowns in which Zimmer chats with artistic collaborators (Pharrell, the Eilishes, Denis V, Sir Chris N), backers (Jerry Bruckheimer, a producer here) and those whose movements his music has scored (Zendaya, Timothée Chalamet). These are by far the documentary's weakest element, beset by the conversational equivalent of airkissing, too brief for anyone to go too deep, and clearly inserted out of an insecurity that Zimmer's name and presence alone won't be enough to get bums on seats. (The full houses for Zimmer's live tour - and the recent proliferation of unofficial "Hans Zimmer Experience" concerts in provincial arts venues nationwide - would suggest otherwise.) If you really wanted to find out what drives Zimmer to create these cathedrals of sound, you'd have to send in a seasoned musicologist, not Little Timmy Caramel; as it is, these editorial Hail Marys serve as readymade opportunities for toilet breaks.

Hasten back to your seat, though, because the main event serves as its own, reasonably compelling answer to the question of just how many people, and how much equipment, may be required to make a sound this vast. Zimmer's touring ensemble isn't some delicate, willowy string quartet, travelling from one mega-corporate arena to the next via charabanc, but a proper, robust troupe, roughly characterised as the Blue Man Group x Stomp, some of whom can be seen smashing the shit out of drumkits that resemble Nolanesque metropoli in themselves. We're bordering on prog territory here: a lot of onstage kit, a busy lightshow, elevated degrees of technical difficulty and virtuosity. (Also, and especially in the case of Zimmer's go-to guitarist Guthrie Govan, highly Rick Wakeman-ish hair.) It means Dugdale always has something to cut to whenever we assume the music can't layer up any more: a piccolo solo that might otherwise get lost amid a wall of thumping SOUND, a cellist in bondage gear and warpaint wielding the tool of her trade as if it were some rudimentary torture implement, flaxen-haired giantesses shrieking or speaking in tongues. (There's a nice moment in the spotlight for Lisa Gerrard, the mainstay of indie recluses Dead Can Dance, whose ululations helped make the Gladiator score soar so.) Even without a Nolan or Villeneuve calling action, it's a spectacle.

It may be that, much as prog had eventually to give way to the blunt-force immediacies of punk, film scoring will itself undergo some revolutionary Year Zero in the not too distant future: that our soundtracks will ditch the numbing parps, the casts of thousands, and revert to new wavers like Mica Levi and this year's Oscar winner Daniel Blumberg making odd, atonal noises on their own in small dark rooms, to movie music that is altogether quicker and quieter about setting a mood or creating a vibe, and that allows an audience to sit more readily with their own thoughts and silence. Yet Dugdale's film allows us to both see and hear why Zimmer's music continues to be as revered as it has been, and why its composer may well have a greater claim to auteur status than many of the filmmakers for whom he's worked: several pieces here (cues from 2019's almost instantly forgotten X-Men: Dark Phoenix, anyone?) actually benefit for being detached and isolated from the sluggish images to which they were once attached. This is music that goes hard, at a time when a lot else about the American popular cinema has lost its directionality and force.

Hans Zimmer & Friends: Diamond in the Desert has encore screenings in selected Cineworld, Odeon and Showcase cinemas throughout the week.