They Shot the Piano Player

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Got to see this from the DOC NYC Festival. This is another collaboration from filmmakers Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal as their previous movie "Chico & Rita" was 13 years ago. Chico & Rita wasn't perfect but I enjoyed the movie for it's characters and ambitious tone. With this new movie, unfortunately, despite strong musical soundtracks and a pretty interesting concept, this movie is a bit underwhelming and not as strong as it is able to be. Throughout, the movie focuses on the life and disappearance of jazz piano player Francisco Tenório and the narrative is told through a mix of documentary and fictional feature style with real people and fictional characters implemented into the narrative. Docudrama movies can be interesting and there are some interesting interview moments and themes explored within the movie. But as whole, the movie suffers from unbalance structures between concepts that were interesting and some not being interesting. As if there were concepts and some ideas that felt a bit lost or uneven. The animation, colors, and models are pretty good but there were a few models that were distracting and cheap looking. Many of the interviews were interesting as the interviews do provide interesting insights on the characters and Tenório. Including some themes about Tenório background, the mystery and some history about Latin America. There are some themes and concepts I kind of wish were explored because they were certain ideas that felt left out or too thin to fully comprehend emotionally. The voice performances from the characters were solid and I like Jeff Goldblum but unfortunately, his narration ended up being slightly distracting halfway as his character felt too thin to care for. The best aspects are on the musical soundtrack as the musical soundtracks of Brazilian music is amazing with good tones and sounds throughout. Solid pacing. Overall, despite the uneven structure, I still remained at least interested to see where the movie was heading towards and at the end, I found it at least interesting. But it could have been better.

This an animation film about the life and tragic death of Francisco Tenório, a jazz piano player. The story is narrated exclusively through the recorded accounts of people who met him, and it's framed through the journey of discovery that a writer takes to write a book about him. The reconstruction of the interviews that constitute the bulk of the film is painstaking and extensive. Most are slightly unfocused, fogged by the passing of time, and can be resumed with "he was a great guy". It's only well into the second act that we start to get crumbs of information about his cruel demise, and eventually the mystery is solved. Ample context is given, and it sheds light over a very dark time of the history of Latin America. You leave the cinema feeling that Francisco remains a ghost, that his short life in perilous times left precious little trace beside his records, but perhaps it's intentional, and it's laudable that the director resists the temptation of creating an overarching narrative for dramatic effect. Side notes: I found the "reduced animation" technique exceedingly distracting, and I couldn't quite decide if it was a stylistic choice, or a budgeting strategy. Jeff Goldblum is pitch-perfect in the part of the narrator, although little is made of the cultural difference between his character, a textbook New Yorker journalist, and his subjects, mostly old men from Brazil and Argentina. Overall, a slightly uneven movie that remains interesting, and tells a worthwhile story. And, ah, Jeff Goldblum.