Posted by Robin Menken
Bossa Nova is making a comeback-filmically.
First there was Roberto de Oliveira’s “Elis and Tom”,a documentary from remastered footage of a legendary recording session in LA in 1974: then Dandara Ferreira & Lô Politi bio pic about Gal Costa "Meu Nome e Gal"- a look at Gal Costa's career as part of Tropicalia's political resistance to the violence of Brazil's new dictatorship;
and now Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal's Animated docu-mystery “They Shot the Piano Player”.
This rich musical mosaic cum thriller is sheer catnip for cool cat and kitty jazz lovers.
Jeff Goldblum voices the main character Jeff Harris, whose fascination with an obscure Bossa Nova pianist, who went missing while on tour in Argentina with Vinicius de Moraes, takes over his book on Bossa Nova.
Moraes- Brazilian poet, diplomat (he served as Brazilian Vice-Consul in LA in the 40's), lyricist, musician, singer, and playwright, co-wrote Black Orpheus, the play and film.
Moraes is one of many luminaries of Brazilian music from Bossa Nova Jazz through Troplicalia and MPB, who appear in the film.
Goldblum's Jeff Harris is essentially Fernando Trueba's alter ego. A noted Jazz pianist, Goldblum brings a sensitive swinging style to his narration.
Discovering an out of print jazz record called O LP, on which Tenorio played, Trueba, like Harris in the film, became fascinated with Francisco Tenorio Jr., the actual Brazilian pianist who tragically went missing in 1976.
A musician's musician, Tenorio recorded one record as a band leader in March 1964, when he was 23 years old-"Embalo".(It's available as a Mr. Bongo re-issued CD). There is a gorgeous sequence of the "Embalo" recording session in the film.
Trueba conducted years of interviews with musicians and friends of Francisco Tenorio Jr. In South America and the U.S. without a specific project in mind. That archive of fascinating interviews became the basis of "They Shot The Piano Player."
Javier Mariscal, one of Trueba's co-directors on their previous animated feature "Chico & Rita", brought a looser more caricatural style to this project. The bright palette and more abstracted character design is reminiscent of jazz-tinged modernist animation classics from UPA's Postwar "Atomic Era" Studio style which influenced animation at Warners, Disney et al.
Trueba and Mariscal adopted UPA's limited animation style, inviting their adult audience to fill in the blanks.
The fictional framing story of Jeff Harris is handled in a more detailed realistic animation style. The flashbacks described by a host of famous musicians and family friends are expressionistic, adopting UPA's bright color blocks to create jazzy emotional sequences.
Apolitical Tenorio was 'disappeared' by the Argentine government, suspected of being a Communist because he had long hair and a musician's union card, tortured and shot in the head in the notorious Navy School of Mechanics (ESMA), in Buenos Aires.
The film also exposes the CIA-approved Operation Condor, where Military dictatorships across South America cooperated in disappearing other countries' suspected exiled leftists.
Among many other figures, Ella Fitzgerald and interviewees Stan Getz, Bud Shank, Joáo Gilberto, Paulo Moura, João Donato, Tom Jobim, Caetano Veloso, Milton Nascimento, Chico Buarque, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Toquinho and Vinicius de Moráes appear in the film
Seductive bossa nova tunes pepper the soundtrack.
Havana-based fictional romance “Chico and Rita” was an homage to latin jazz by Trueba, a hard core music buff and sometime producer. It featured appearances by Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonius Monk and Cuban master conga player Chano Pozo.
Sony Classics is distributing the entrancing "They Shot The Piano Player" in the U.S.
