They Shot the Piano Player [Review]
They Shot the Piano Player is a portrait of a revolutionary musical style and a harrowing time period in Latin America.
Ella Fitzgerald depicted in THEY SHOT THE PIANO PLAYER. Photo credit: Javier Mariscal. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
Director Fernando Trueba reunited with co-director Javier Mariscal after their previous animated film, Chico & Rita (2010). Half narrative drama and half documentary, They Shot the Piano Player melds a fictional framing device with years of real interviews conducted by Trueba in his own research of the film’s subject.
Writer and avid audiophile Jeff Harris (Jeff Goldblum) wrote a well-received article in the New Yorker about Bossa Nova, the influential Brazilian musical movement of the late 1950s and early 1960. He’s asked by Jessica (Roberta Wallach), his editor, to expand his article into a book, so Harris travels to Brazil where he interviews luminaries of the Bossa Nova movement. During his early research, Harris had discovered a pianist named Tenório Jr., who recorded a single album and then disappeared from the musical landscape; as he begins asking questions about Tenório to his contemporaries, Harris becomes obsessed. Tenório Jr., a musical genius and a key but largely forgotten progenitor of Bossa Nova, disappeared under mysterious circumstances in Buenos Aires. He becomes the new focus of Harris’ book as he learns about the chilling effects of Latin America’s brutal totalitarian regimes.
Photo credit: Javier Mariscal. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
While the story of the book research as told through Jeff Goldblum’s character is fiction, the interview subjects, Tenório Jr., and his history are not. Jeff Harris serves as a guide for the audience to listen to interviews conducted by director Trueba. He introduces the viewer to Bossa Nova and begins peeling back the layers of Tenório Jr.’s tragic story as a “disappeared” victim of the Argentinian military police during the days ahead of the nascent coup. In that shift, the movie effectively dives into the workings of the military governments’ programs of abduction and assassination, the collusion between different Latin American countries under military rule, and the complicit role of the United States through Operation Condor.
The film’s narrative approach is an effective one. Turning the usual documentary narrator into an audience surrogate makes the viewer more invested in the film. It stops feeling like a documentary and feels more like a journalistic drama or a procedural. The discussions with the film’s real subjects also come off much warmer and more personal.
Photo credit: Javier Mariscal. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
I could take or leave the animation. I understand the choice; it afforded the filmmakers the ability to depict Tenório Jr. as a living character and it would have been more difficult to weave the narrative of Jeff Harris’ journalistic discovery if all of the interviews were recorded separately over time. The problem is that the quality of the animation is uneven and at times feels sloppy. It’s a shame, considering the visuals of the pair’s previous film together, Chico & Rita.
They Shot the Piano Player is a compelling story and documentary unfortunately stuck in an animated film of less than average quality. It remains a great portrait of the life of a passionate musician and a gateway to a highly influential era of music along with the tragedy of the politically turbulent times that ended it and Tenório Jr.’s life all too soon.
They Shot the Piano Player is in theaters now, with an expanded release beginning on March 8.
