'Round Midnight

 

Director Bertrand Tavernier with actor Philippe Noiret

Tavernier with Martin Scorsese

Dexter Gordon

 

 

 

‘ROUND MIDNIGHT             B+                                                                                          USA  France  (133 mi)  1986 ‘Scope  d: Bertrand Tavernier

The swing bands used to be all straight tonics seventh chords.  And then, with the Basie band I heard Lester Young and he sounded like he came out of the blue.  Because he was playing all the color tones the sixths and the ninths and major sevenths.  You know, like Debussy and Ravel.  Then Charlie Parker came on and he began to expand and he went into elevenths and thirteenths and flat fives.  Luckily, I was going in the same direction already.  You just don’t go out and pick a style off a tree one day.  The tree is inside you growing naturally.                       —Dale Turner (Dexter Gordon)

When you have to explore every night, even the most beautiful things that you find can be the most painful.                                                                                                                                   —Ace (Bobby Hutcherson)

The first English-language film by Bertrand Tavernier, the maker of Journey Through French Cinema (Voyage à travers le cinéma français) (2016), where this is adapted from Dance of the Infidels, a 1986 book by French author and graphic designer Francis Paudras, a moving jazz memoir and biography that covers the last 8 years in the turbulent life of jazz pianist Bud Powell, who was to the piano what Charlie Parker was to the saxophone, with Tavernier, along with co-writer David Rayfiel, creating a fictionalized story combining the lives of Powell and tenor saxophonist Lester Young into a single character, an expatriate black jazz musician living in Paris during the late 1950’s, embodied by legendary tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon in the lead role, who was himself among the first influential bebop musicians.  Gordon had experience as a stage actor, appearing in the Los Angeles production of the 1959 play The Connection, made into a film by Shirley Clarke in 1961, which was about a collection of heroin-addicted jazz musicians who sat around waiting for their drug dealer, their “connection,” creating a great deal of censorship controversy at the time, yet it’s a compelling snapshot of a subculture that Gordon was familiar with, where the dialogue of the characters is interspersed with jazz music, some of which was written by Gordon.  According to Tavernier, jazz taught him the freedom of storytelling through improvisation, while also informing him that when performing a composition they didn’t write, musicians demonstrate a deep respect while simultaneously infusing it with their own unique style and personal touch.  This duality of respect for tradition and personal expression informs Tavernier’s filmmaking philosophy, where it’s ironic that it took a foreign director to do justice to jazz, a quintessential American artform, described by Roger Ebert in his TV review as a film that “creeps inside you and stays there,” Siskel & Ebert - 'Round Midnight YouTube (3:41).  Working closely with the director to ensure the film would accurately portray the jazz life, Gordon creates a unique persona that we’re not used to seeing, as he knew how musicians spoke and carried themselves, spending more than a dozen years living and performing in Europe, finding Europe in the 1960’s a much easier place to live than America, saying that he experienced less racism and greater respect for jazz musicians.  Named after a Thelonious Monk composition, the film was ranked #2 in Roger Ebert’s top films of 1986, and #9 in Gene Siskel’s top films of 1986, premiering at the Toronto Film Festival in 1986, with Gordon nominated for a Best Actor Academy Award, while the jazz music written by pianist Herbie Hancock, one of the primary architects of the post-bop sound, who also appears in the film as pianist and bandleader Eddie Wayne, won an Oscar for Best Original Score in 1987, using harmonies influenced by great French composers Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, beautifully rendered here, Herbie Hancock - The Peacocks YouTube (7:15), with Hancock quoted as saying, “Jazz is being in the moment.”  Gordon gives an inspired performance as the aging, self-destructive saxophonist Dale Turner, looking for a fresh start in Paris, where he is surrounded by an all-star group of young virtuoso musicians, giving the live jazz performances an authentic look and sound, where the film is light on plot, becoming more of an impressionistic mood piece, much like an extended jazz composition, even making reference to Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s THE RED SHOES (1948), suggesting “The music is all that matters.  Nothing but the music.”

An interesting aspect of Francis Paudras is that he was himself an accomplished yet amateur jazz and classical pianist, befriending many of the great jazz pianists who played in Europe in the early 60’s, and it was there that Paudras found Powell, where he developed a profound friendship, becoming his caretaker and unofficial manager in Paris during the early 60’s when Powell suffered a mental and physical health crisis, moving him into his own Paris apartment as he was recovering from mental breakdowns, tuberculosis, and alcoholism.  It was during this period that he began filming Powell with a 16mm home movie camera, amassing a collection of home movies, interviews, and recordings that offer valuable insights into Powell’s life.  This intervention in his life provides the template for Tavernier’s film, where the line between reality and fiction is very thin, while his decision to cast a deliberately slowed down, world weary Dexter Gordon, who is tall and lanky at six feet five, and seems to exist on another plane than everyone else around him, was based on the director’s displeasure with actors playing roles of musicians when it was obvious they couldn’t hold the instruments correctly or play a note, where he was going for authenticity, casting mostly black musicians as actors because they were real-life musical giants, giving the film credibility it wouldn’t otherwise have.  Other films about jazz have been undercut by both an ignorance about the music and by an inability to construct a dramatic context, including directors as diverse as Martin Ritt in Paris Blues (1961), John Cassavetes in Too Late Blues (1961), Martin Scorsese in New York, New York (1977), and Francis Ford Coppola in THE COTTON CLUB (1984), films that typically express an indifference to jazz history.  Tavernier makes up for this by hiring musicians who are among the best in the business, including Wayne Shorter, Tony Williams, Freddie Hubbard, Ron Carter, Bobby Hutcherson, John McLaughlin, Billy Higgins, Cedar Walton, and French bassist Pierre Michelot who played with Powell, as nearly all of the music is recorded live, and we’re usually allowed to listen to it without edited interruptions, elevating the music of jazz to a central character, while he also allowed Gordon and the other musicians in the cast to collaborate on their own dialogue, with Gordon using the nickname “Lady” for all his friends, male and female, as well as his instrument, a habit attributed to Lester Young.  Considered among the best jazz films ever created, maybe the best, though Jeanne Moreau’s screen presence with the evocative film noir score by Miles Davis in Elevator to the Gallows (Ascenseur pour l'échafaud) (1958) is worthy of mention, while the best book on the subject may be the impressionistic stream-of-conscience novel about jazz cornetist Buddy Bolden, one of the originators of jazz, in Coming Through Slaughter by Sri Lankan-born Canadian poet, fiction writer and essayist Michael Ondaatje, his first published novel in 1976.  This is much better known than Tavernier’s other films simply because it had an American producer (Irwin Winkler) and much wider distribution in the U.S. through Warner Brothers.  What’s interesting about the film is the community of American artists in Paris, where their off-handed humor, interest in cooking their own food (Bobby Hutcherson is always dressed in a silk bathrobe, hilariously never leaving his hotel room, as he’s completely obsessed with spending all of his time cooking soul food), and sociable camaraderie add a lighthearted touch of humanism that starkly contrasts with the vibrant energy of the late-night music scenes.  

When Powell moved to France, it was with his girlfriend Altevia “Buttercup” Edwards, who managed his finances and his medicine, with Tavernier similarly creating a part for Sandra Reaves-Phillips as Buttercup, a sassy blues singer who is seen in the hotel greeting Turner’s arrival before appearing in the small Parisian jazz nightclub named the Blue Note, where she keeps him locked in his room until showtime and prevents them from paying him in cash, while also making sure they refuse to serve him alcohol.  But that doesn’t stop him from seeking drinks elsewhere, which is where he initially meets penniless movie poster illustrator, single father, and jazz aficionado Francis Borier (François Cluzet), looking like a young Dustin Hoffman, seen faithfully squatting down in the basement windowsill outside the club to hear, even in the pouring rain, as he hasn’t the cover charge for admittance.  Turner asks him to buy him a beer across the street, and the two become fast friends.  We’ve seen François Cluzet before in the very first Claire Denis film, Chocolat (1988), and an earlier Olivier Assayas film, Late August, Early September (Fin août, début septembre)  (1998), where his enthusiasm for Turner’s music is genuine, inviting him back to his home where he meets his impressionable young pre-teen daughter Bérangère (Gabrielle Haker), currently living separately from her mother (Christine Pascal), who is in the midst of having an affair with another man.  Their friendship forms the basis of the film, as he helps prevent the police from sending him to a sanitarium following an arrest, and helps stabilize his life.  Even knowing how easily he gives in to temptation, as drugs and alcohol are the bane of his existence, Francis eliminates the influence of his money handlers and has the club pay him directly, while also helping him stay sober by allowing him to live in his home, returning to him a sense of empowerment.  Openly embracing a subtext of racism in America, telling a flashback story that was partly derived from Lester Young’s recollections of witnessing brutal beatings and racist abuse in the army, while also drawing upon other jazz artists who came before him, the mannerisms and quiet dignity that Dexter Gordon brings to bear are all his own, powerful enough, apparently, that none other than Marlon Brando wrote to him to say that it was the first time in fifteen years that he’d learned something new about acting.  This is beautifully captured in a sequence with Lonette McKee as former lover Darcey Leigh, who takes the stage to eloquently sing a song, How Long Has This Been Going On?  YouTube (4:05), where her white gardenias connect her to Billie Holiday and Lester Young.  He eventually decides it’s time to return back home to New York, see his old friends, and re-acquaint himself with his own estranged daughter, with Martin Scorsese making a cameo appearance as his motormouth agent, Goodley.  His daughter Chan (Victoria Gabrielle Platt) is invited to a club to hear her father dedicate a melancholic song for her, Dexter Gordon - Chan's song (from the movie) YouTube (3:09), which reflects the emotional distance that still remains between them, knowing he has not been there enough in her life.  Not long afterwards Francis receives word that Turner has died, with the final scene paying tribute to his musical legacy and influence, introduced by none other than Herbie Hancock at the Théâtre Antique de Lyon, 23 'Round Midnight · Ending Scene | Remember Dale Turner YouTube (3:46), while reels of Super 8 movies are watched by Francis and his daughter, becoming an elegy to his lasting memory.

Late August, Early September (Fin août, début septembre)

LATE AUGUST, EARLY SEPTEMBER (Fin août, début septembre)      A                    

France  (112 mi)  1998  d:  Olivier Assayas 

After writing film criticism for Cahiers du Cinéma between 1979 and 1985, much like the New Wave directors had done in the 50’s, Olivier Assayas emerged as a prominent filmmaker during the second half of the 1980’s.  Not only learning to articulate cinematic ideas and choices, Assayas also experimented with short films while writing screenplays for André Téchiné, like RENDEZ-VOUS (1985), SCENE OF THE CRIME (1986), and ALICE AND MARTIN (1998), where the critical success of his first screenplay is how he was able to get his first feature financed.  Like many great artists, Assayas has been able to keep a close circle of artistic collaborators with him throughout his career:  Denis Lenoir and Éric Gautier (cinematography), Luc Barnier (editing), William Flageollet (sound mixing), Françoise Clavel (costume design), and François-Renaud Labarthe (art direction/production design), all of whom worked on this film, except Gautier, who collaborated on eight other films beginning with Irma Vep (1996).  Similarly, a stable of recurring actors has followed as well, including Virginie Ledoyen, Nathalie Richard, and Jeanne Balibar seen here, also in minor roles Elli Medeiros, Alex Descas (still working with Claire Denis), and Arsinée Khanjian (married to Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan).  The stellar ensemble cast assembled for this film is a coterie of young French actors that later became major French film stars, but these are their early years, very much like the parts they play in the film, Parisian friends in their 30’s, most all at a midway point in their lives, where they are at an age when they’re settling down and becoming respectable, a time when money and a career are a necessity, as they can’t pay rent on youthful idealism.  The story revolves around the lives of six people, where money is a constant worry, but especially for Adrien (François Cluzet), the only one to reach forty, a critically respected writer who has already written three novels, but none were a success, becoming unfailingly critical of his own failings.  He develops an unknown sickness that nearly costs him his life, where the film plays out like THE BIG CHILL (1983), where a group of friends grow increasingly concerned, but it’s not his death, but their own mortality that is suddenly challenged, beautifully conveyed with a probing, novelistic density.

After becoming familiar with the work of Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien, Assayas, in a 1999 interview in ArtForum, believed he has “a particular way of describing time, of describing the progression of action:  you’ll have fragments of the same reality, and sometimes time is not moving.”  In this case, the center of the film is an ailing man, but the narrative structure is developed from eliciting a series of personal reactions to his sickness, including characters sharing thoughts and recollections, who are also involved in their own personal connections, both present and past, all of which add complexity to their lives, as the audience is able to develop a greater understanding of all the characters through a series of interconnected relationships.  The film is divided into six chapter headings that only slightly advance the story, such as a week later, or two months later, reflecting a passing of time, yet the connections between the characters are only slightly altered, yet over time, this change, both in time and subjectivity, becomes more significantly noticeable.  Gabriel, Mathieu Amalric, always nervous and insecure, is a book editor that admires Adrien and looks up to him, who undergoes a pronounced change when the usually stoic Adrien starts revealing personal feelings about himself and his life, such as his illness.  Gabriel has a highly volatile but extremely attractive younger girlfriend, Virginie Ledoyen as Anne, but he’s not yet ready to commit, which only angers her, often disrupting things for the worse.  Gabriel is selling his former apartment with his ex-girlfriend, Jenny, Jeanne Balibar, exposed and vulnerable.  In a case where truth is stranger than fiction, these two in real life were involved romantically at the time, and their scenes together as ex-lovers couldn’t feel more natural, as you can sense their still thriving but not acted upon attraction, though both are two of the most gifted actors working in France.  Adrien also has a secret teenage love with the 16-year old Vera, Mia Hansen-Løve, currently married in real life to the director, and a director in her own right, though only 17 at the time, while Arsinée Khanjian is his old flame, still bitter about their breakup.

The film is shot on 16mm and blown up to 35mm, where part of the artistic vision is achieved by the masterful hand-held cinematography by Denis Lenoir, much as he did in Cold Water (L’eau Froide) (1994), using long, unbroken takes, where the constant camera movement reflects the continuing restless anxiety of the characters.  The episodic structure, divided into segments like chapter titles, emphasizes the effect of time and the way people drift in and out of each other’s lives, where often weeks or months pass between visits, yet the viewer has a deep sense of each character, where it’s interestingly a time when writing letters was how absent lovers expressed themselves, where a passage of time would have to occur before there was a response.  The film often skips a step and jumps ahead, where the relationship has already shifted, expressed by a glance, or a few words, such as the advancing illness of Adrien, where the change has a noticeable effect on each one of them.  Much like the Ozu title suggests, the movie is filled with ordinary moments, yet when strung together it leads to remarkable lives.  Without an ounce of sentimentality, we get a sense of changing seasons and time passing, where throughout Assayas scrutinizes personal relationships and changing perspectives, including the role of sex, family, career, and friendships, not to mention how each of us responds differently when facing mortality.  The film is an impressionistic mosaic of interconnecting lives, where the social drive for honesty and truthfulness with one another is a surprisingly tender notion often lacking in modern era films, which, despite the improvements of social media, are more often defined by alienation and distance.  This is a film that beautifully expresses the subtlety in relationships, where Gabriel and Anne visit his brother (Eric Elmosino) and wife (Nathalie Richard) at their home in the country with family and close friends, including Gabriel’s ex-lover Jenny.  As they all try to come to terms with the seriousness of Adrien’s condition, they are intensely expressing their grief while the younger Anne, still seen sitting off to the side, quietly withdraws into herself, completely excluded from the intensity of this adult world, literally unable to comprehend this entire chapter of Gabriel’s life.  Similarly, the way Adrien’s friends discuss the teenage girl Vera after he dies is heartbreakingly cruel, where she’s largely seen on the periphery of the screen, saying little, where she remains an entity unknown to them, so she is excluded from what rightfully belongs to her when dividing up Adrien’s artworks and personal possessions, as she’s not viewed as a mature person.  Unknowingly, they are disconnecting what we already understand to be a loving relationship. The beauty of the film, however, is the ease in which relationships form and split apart, only to reconnect again in a completely unexpected context, becoming a brilliant character study where relationships are never static, but continually adapt to the changing world around them.   

Chocolat (1988)

CHOCOLAT               A           
France  Germany  Cameroon  (105 mi)  1988  d:  Claire Denis

When I was making Chocolat I think I had the desire to express a certain guilt I felt as a child raised in a colonial world […] knowing I was white, I tried to be honest in admitting that Chocolat is essentially a white view of the Other. 

—Claire Denis

When you look at the hills, beyond the houses and beyond the trees, where the earth touches the sky, that’s the horizon. The closer you get to that line, the father it moves. If you walk towards it, it moves away. It flees from you. I must also explain this to you. You see the line. You see it, but it doesn’t exist.              —Marc Dalens (François Cluzet)

The daughter of a civil servant, Denis spent much of her childhood in different colonial French West African countries in the 1950’s, living in what is now Burkina Faso, Somalia, Senegal, and Cameroon before returning to France where she assisted other directors such as Dušan Makavejev, Costa-Gavras, Jacques Rivette, Wim Wenders, and Jim Jarmusch before directing her first feature at the age of 40, so like Toni Morrison in literature who never wrote a novel until her 40’s, she brings an unconventional maturity into her works.  She's one of the unsung filmmakers of our era, a director who moves between an experimental, avant-garde style with slight to nonexistent narratives to more conventional narratives fairly easily, usually focusing on the personal lives of marginalized characters usually absent from mainstream cinema (immigrants, exiles, alienated individuals, sexual transgressives), and while rarely calling attention to her impeccable craftsmanship, Denis has a highly individualistic aesthetic that favors poetic texture and visualized style over dialogue and action.  Often resorting to fractured time frames, she often blurs the lines between dreams and reality, the past and the present, where memory evokes painful references to history, which she uses to question the ingrained prejudices of the dominant white European culture and its supposed myth of civilization and progress.  The film is largely a memory piece that has an aching rawness to it as a young woman in her 20’s named France (Mireille Perrier) returns to the African region where she grew up during her childhood, a nation that has since gained its independence, but her reflections recall when it was under French colonialist control during her childhood in the 50’s.  A near hypnotic experience, the film stuns by its ability to express with such banality how easily it is to mistreat an entire nation of citizens, as people are seen as less than human, where the colonialist mentality sees Africans as incapable of being anything other than servile domestics, overly submissive servants that wait on the French hand and foot, mostly living in dire poverty themselves which the French ignore while living their own lives of luxury and ease.          

France (Cécile Ducasse) is a young white girl living in a remote colonial outpost in Cameroon, where the French flag is raised to the sound of trumpets each day, as she is raised separately from all the other black children in the village.  She is a child of wealth and privilege, where African servants dutifully obey her family’s every wish from the time they wake up in the morning until they’re safely asleep.  Her father, Marc Dalens (François Cluzet), is the regional administrator who is always away on important business adventures, where it’s his job to resolve petty tribal disputes while also keeping an eye open for the future, while her extraordinarily beautiful mother Aimée (Giulia Boschi) stays at home and lives a life of bourgeois refinement, usually arguing with the cook as the meals aren’t French enough, but always well looked after by the house servant, Protée (Isaach de Bankolé), a regular fixture in the home, always curteous, whose tall and muscular frame cuts a handsome and imposing figure, and while he’s a man of intelligence and great dignity, his soft-spoken manner and quiet reserve express a certain nobility.  Much of the director’s interest lies in what’s never spoken, in the silences that exist between characters, frequently leaving out explanatory information, leaving the viewer to superimpose their own thoughts about what the characters might be thinking.  Protée is usually France’s only friend, where she often runs off with him as he attends to errands, growing impatient if he overextends his stay, reminding him that her mother is expecting him.  And while the film is seen through France’s eyes, both as a young woman and as a child, it’s more about her recollections of Protée, whose continual acts of kindness are never reciprocated.  Perhaps the singlemost allure of the film is Abdullah Ibrahim’s fascinating musical score, offering a mix of sophisticated European jazz with a raw African flavor, almost always used during long tracking shots of the nearby landscape, beautifully shot by Robert Alazraki, with Agnès Godard as the actual camera operator, where the countryside itself becomes a silent character in the film.  It’s the exotic feeling of “otherness” that punctuates the music with sublime textures of faraway lands. 

A single event disrupts the mirage of harmony, when a plane is forced to land nearby, where they are forced to wait for weeks to get a needed part for repair.  During this interlude, the French passengers reveal their true colors, at first grateful for the lavish hospitality, but soon become bored and with nothing else to do but turn on the African help with an onslaught of racist invectives that are meant to be demeaning and hurtfully cruel, where one in particular, a spoiled young ingrate named Luc (Jean-Claude Adelin), intentionally tries to penetrate through the passive reserve of Protée, continually mocking him, hoping he will break character.  This kind of sick amusement only exposes the racist attitudes about Africans back home in France, but also unleashes unspoken sexual desires, as Protée’s solemn presence attracts the desire of Aimée, especially with her husband away so much of the time.  This contrast of demeaning humiliation with idealized sexuality expresses with equal measure the arrogance and pure ignorance of the colonial rulers, who have no respect or any knowledge whatsoever of the African people or culture.  Africans are routinely seen grooming one another in the afternoon sun, or we hear the sound of children at play, while the French hide indoors, seeking refuge in the shade, often hiding behind dark sunglasses, drinking themselves into a stupor.  Africans must bathe in the “Boys shower,” an open air outdoor facility in full view of the main house, where even their privacy is on full display.  Despite this nakedness, it’s ironic how little is known of the world of Africans, who are rarely seen and are given minimal dialogue, continually reinforcing the white perspective.  It is only in the relationship between Protée and young France that we see evidence of any developing complexity, a relationship that is abruptly challenged when Protée rejects Aimée’s sexual advances and she has him quickly banished from the house, an act that has lifelong consequences for young France as well.  The film is a stark reminder of human contradictions, with so many thoughts left unspoken, every gesture ambiguous.  Ultimately the film explores the parameters between ourselves and the mysterious Other, where the camera intrudes across various boundaries of the body, the spirit, and the mind, but also borders and culture, often unwillingly asking us to look at what moral lines are being crossed.  The silence of Protée is symptomatic of Denis’s sensitivity, as we know little about his character, and can only guess his motivations.  Rather than offering an understanding of the Other, it remains an open question where we are left to determine its meaning and value for ourselves.