Rewind & Play

 

Director Alain Gomis

REWIND & PLAY                B                                                                                                 France  Germany  (65 mi)  2022  d: Alain Gomis

It brings tears to my eyes when I see the shit that my father was going through.                    —T.S. Monk Jr. from Rewind & Play - Forum 2022 

This is an oddly unorthodox little film that reveals the inherent harm in showcasing such a unique jazz artist in such a conventional light, entirely based upon two hours of unused archival footage from a December 1969 French television interview with Thelonious Monk before his final European concert tour performance at the Salle Pleyel in Paris, outtake footage we were never intended to see, where the utter indifference on display from interviewer Henri Renaud to the artist during the recording is difficult to watch, as the spotlight instead is on the sheer inadequacy of the white media who seem unqualified to tell his story, yet that doesn’t stop them from telling one anyway.  Throughout the interview on the French TV show Jazz Portrait, we painfully witness how Monk’s brief responses are immediately deemed unsatisfactory to his interviewers, and are interrupted, dismissed, spoken over in French, and edited out.  In stark contrast, the shots of him playing the piano allow his music to express the deeply complex humanity of the man, whose nature seems unfathomable to the television industry at the time.  Leaning over the piano, Renaud attempts to create an intimate setting, trying to engage the artist in an on-going dialogue, yet a production crew of at least a dozen are continually hovering nearby, walking back and forth, forced to endure retake after retake, showing a complete disregard for how they are affecting Monk’s curt responses, as the artist’s life is manipulated and trivialized to such an extent that in apparent frustration Monk gets up to leave at one point, but is convinced to stay through what appears to be hands-on physical restraint, revealing just how agonizing this insulting experience is to him, as he’s treated like a commodity they are trying to sell, like a packaged product, exposing the shocking disconnect between the black artist and the white media.  This is a film that is not for everyone, barely over an hour in length, yet it’s a reflection of the casual racism that existed in the 60’s, as the KKK’s influence in the American South was everpresent in the region, where arrests, bombings, and murders of blacks, as well as whites sympathetic to their cause, were all too commonplace, while France was fighting colonial wars in a misguided attempt to hold onto their control of black African colonies.  Made by the director of Félicité (2017), born of a Senegalese father and a French Guinee-Bissau mother, Alain Gomis studied art history and earned a master’s degree in cinematographic studies at the Sorbonne.  What this film exposes is how easily black history is erased, as one of the preeminent jazz artists of our time is literally silenced before our eyes, his words purged from the record, and replaced by a dismissive white establishment that prefers to tell a more palatable version to mainstream audiences that is free of controversy, but it amounts to censorship, an act filled with controversy, especially for artists who are the poets of each generation.  However, it’s an immersive experience where you’re in the presence of Thelonious Monk for one solid hour, yet it’s also a revealing look at how celebrities are packaged, and how black entertainers, in particular, are infantilized, placing words in their mouths supposedly to protect them from themselves, where what amounts to friendly intentions become misrepresentation, which, as it turns out, is fairly typical of the daily black experience even today.

The clips include his arrival at the airport, when passengers actually exited planes to the ground, walking outdoors to the gates, accompanied by his effervescent wife Nellie (wearing très chic eyeglasses), meeting up with Renaud at a bar for a quick drink before heading into the Montmartre television studio.  Easily the most watchable aspect of this film are the lengthy piano passages from Monk, as there is no one else on the planet who plays like him, universally respected by his peers.  We have seen rare glimpses of his massive talent on display mixed with his quirky personality in Charlotte Zwerin’s documentary portrait, Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser (1988), which catches him in his element, friendly, honest, and gentle, with a brooding shyness when seen alongside personal friends and other jazz artists.  But those friends are missing here as he’s subtly demeaned and denigrated by an imperceptive TV crew, where it’s a shock how much he was disrespected, offering no window into his artistic vision, and no background whatsoever other than Renaud’s repeated attempts to fill in his own personal narrative, much of which is filmed after Monk has left, creating an eerie impression of just how thoroughly manipulative the media can be.  Instead Monk is left alone in this onslaught of casual disregard, peppered with absurdly meaningless questions, where his discomfort is etched all over his face, sweat constantly dripping under the lights, where his only refuge is quietly tuning them out while playing the piano.  The editing scheme reveals just how chaotic this experience must have been for him, as there are repeated stops, asking the very same question all over again, sometimes in French, each time expecting a different answer more to their liking, leading to lengthy periods where he is made to sit and wait while they sort things out in French, becoming a pointless exercise in futility.  Even when he offers extended, contemplative answers, they incredulously cut off what he actually says, with Renaud claiming “it’s not nice” to mention the bad experiences he had when he first came to France, promoted as the star performer yet he couldn’t bring along his own musicians and had to play with people he never met before, and was paid substantially less than the other musicians.  There’s a brutality to this experience, where honesty is considered far too real for television, as they continually reject what he has to say, yet he never loses his composure, even as it becomes evident that it’s absurdly impossible to say anything at all except what he can express through the piano.  Henri Renaud is not a journalist, but a fellow jazz pianist who has apparently spent some time with Monk in America, even been to his home, but the awkwardness between them is blisteringly apparent, with Renaud never making any adjustments in his style, never taking the artist aside to apologize for the delays or offer any degree of warmth or comfort, never asking how he feels, instead he blazes through each take with the same degree of callousness, turning the spotlight on himself, showing no regard to Monk whatsoever, an example of the formulaic struggles artists face when attempting to expand their audience.  The apt title mirrors the disordered interview style, yet also may be a reference to turning back the clock, suggesting conditions for minorities haven’t really changed in the last half century.     

To many whites viewing this film, they will see nothing out of the ordinary, wondering what all the fuss is about, likely seeing no signs of racism, but the condescending and paternalistic treatment of such a renowned jazz artist is simply astounding, showing no deference to his mood or what he has to say, as he is the star of the show, yet he is not treated like a star, where the studio’s suppression of his voice, never allowing him to express himself in his own words, and the demeaning, stereotypical treatment of such a jazz legend is shameful and deplorable.  Other than getting up to leave, Monk never loses his cool, remaining calm throughout the entire ordeal, occasionally questioning whether it’s actually worth it with the constant interruptions, thinking they’d make better use of their time going out for dinner, as this pretend version of “relaxed” is exhaustive, certainly taking its toll, leaving the artist fatigued after ten years of touring, with Monk making only rare public appearances after this.  Much of this is told in extreme close-ups, becoming a photo essay of the expressions on his face, rarely capturing this degree of intimacy with such a legendary artist, yet the distance between them is inescapable, with Renaud wanting to show admiration, yet the inept nature of his questions shows an innate insensitivity, while his aloof demeanor suggests a total stranger, offering no personal or musical insight, no hint of the artist’s sensitivity, where they may as well be on distant planets.  If truth be told, Monk was a misunderstood artist his entire career, with his angular, often dissonant, and percussive style of play, where it took him more than a decade to be recognized as one of the greats, yet this reputation for “difficulty” followed him his entire lifetime.  Surely Renaud is aware of this, as he was a musical consultant for Bertrand Tavernier ‘s film AROUND MIDNIGHT (1986), based on Monk’s most famous composition, yet he bulldozes through this material without ever paying honor and respect to the man himself, where there is an abyss between them.  It’s not Renaud who will be playing at the Salle Pleyel, it is Monk, the second-most-recorded jazz composer after Duke Ellington, and a supreme artist at the height of his career, yet we never get this impression during the interview.  Instead it is beset with clumsy technical difficulties, which the director amplifies with an ungainly editing structure using outtakes, accentuating silences, deleting sound altogether, highlighting the repetitive technical glitches, where he’s forced to do yet another take, making this uncomfortable to watch, as viewers really want a taste of Monk, and they get it in beautifully extended passages of I Should Care, Thelonious, Crepuscule With Nellie, Ugly Beauty, Don’t Blame Me, Reflections, Epistrophy, Monk’s Mood, Round Midnight, Meet Me In Dreamland, Coming on the Hudson, and Nice Work If You Can Get It, but they also get the infuriating confusion associated with the so-called interview that goes awry.  A companion piece to Terence Dixon’s Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris (1970), where a clearly defiant James Baldwin was angrily resistant to the direction the naïve white filmmaker was taking him, yet to his credit, Gomis edits the film in the manner of Monk’s playing, filled with the physicality, abrupt changes of tempo, and harmonic dissonances that define his unique style, never trying to appease listeners, instead shattering boundaries.  Not an easy watch, but one that opens our eyes to how easily history is eradicated at the expense of the truth.        

Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary

Coltrane with Miles

 

Miles, Cannonball Adderley, and Coltrane

Coltrane House in Philadelphia

Dix Hills home, Long Island

John Coltrane with Alice

Coltrane with McCoy Tyner

CHASING TRANE:  THE JOHN COLTRANE DOCUMENTARY         B+                               USA  (99 mi)  2016  d: John Scheinfeld                              

An essential portrait in the life of a jazz giant and a companion piece to Stanley Nelson’s Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool (2020), as both Miles and Coltrane’s lives were forever altered by experiencing the genius of Charlie Parker in concert at a young age, as he was capable of doing things on his alto saxophone that no one else had ever done, literally blowing the minds of these developing young musicians.  Miles and Coltrane may be the two most iconic figures in American jazz, and they collaborated at the height of their respective careers, with Coltrane initially working with Miles in 1955, believing at the time he had reached a zenith in his career, but he followed too closely in the footsteps of Parker, prey to the seductive pimps and drug pushers that hung around jazz clubs in those days, developing a heroin habit, even at the expense of his career, where he and saxophonist Jimmy Heath were caught getting high between sets, both immediately fired by Davis, who didn’t allow drugs to interfere with the business of making music.  Coming early on in the film, it provides something of a jolt, as immediately he’s canned and out on his ass before the film really had a chance to get started.  Down in the doldrums, he goes cold turkey, something requiring great fortitude, going through withdrawals on his own, with his stepdaughter Antonia Andrews recalling he was vomiting all night and sick with fever, but each successive day he was a little bit better.  Flashing back to his boyhood in North Carolina, both of his grandparents were preachers, so he grew up immersed in the church, where spiritual salvation was at the fiber of his being, fixating on music as a lifeline in the Jim Crow South, as his mother sang and played piano, while his father played clarinet and violin.  According to Dr. Cornel West, who taught classes on Coltrane at Princeton and who himself is the grandson of a Baptist minister, explaining how blacks came out of the brutal conditions of slavery, “We gonna share and spread some soothing sweetness against the backdrop of a dark catastrophe.  That’s black music,” claiming further, “Black music was the response to being traumatized.”  Experiencing some dark times, at age 12 he lost his father, uncle, and two grandparents in the space of just two years.  Out of work and needing a source of income, his mother moved to Philadelphia and made enough money to afford music lessons for her son, buying him his first saxophone, switching from the clarinet to the saxophone.  Coltrane was in the Navy stationed at Pearl Harbor after the war, recording with other enlisted men in an all-white swing band playing jazz standards and be-bop tunes, returning to Philadelphia afterwards to study jazz theory on the G.I. Bill.  According to Wynton Marsalis, listening to those early Navy recordings offer no indication whatsoever of the astounding talent he would become.  Made with the support of the John Coltrane Estate, utilizing astonishing, never-before-seen Coltrane family home movies, footage of John Coltrane in the studio with Monk, Miles Davis and others, along with hundreds of never-before-seen photographs and rare television appearances from around the world, incisive commentary is provided from musicians that worked with him, like childhood friend Benny Golson, Jimmy Heath, Wayne Shorter, and the always real Sonny Rollins, but also those who have been inspired by his indomitable artistry, including Wynton Marsalis, Carlos Santana, Doors drummer John Densmore, and Common, along with a surprisingly eloquent President Bill Clinton, who famously plays the saxophone, with more commentary from Coltrane’s own children, two of his biographers, Ben Ratliff and Lewis Porter, and jazz scholar Ashley Kahn.  What separates Coltrane from everyone else is that after he gets clean from drugs and alcohol, he then goes on a creative, artistic and spiritual quest the likes of which we have perhaps never seen over a 10-year period by any artist in any medium, becoming one of the seminal figures of jazz.  It might recall the legendary bluesman Robert Johnson whose life and death remain shrouded in mystery, growing up in the Mississippi Delta during the Great Depression, whose musical skills, according to bluesman Son House, were less than stellar.  But after going down to the proverbial crossroads and traveling across the Delta for two years (making a mythological deal with the devil), he returned a bona fide genius of his craft, summoning skills seemingly from out of nowhere, Robert Johnson: The Life And Legacy Of The Blues Giant, doing an infamous recording session over the course of five days, producing just 29 songs, but nearly all of them have become classic standards in the blues canon, forever known as a master of the blues.  Entirely scored with the music of John Coltrane, as access was granted from the entire catalogue, music becomes the major focus of the film, serving as an unspoken narration heard throughout, as he never speaks onscreen, instead Denzel Washington reads from his own interviews and liner notes published between 1957 and 1967.  One major drawback is the persistent use of paintings from the colorfully animated artwork of Rudy Gutierrez in Gary Golio’s children’s book Spirit Seeker – John Coltrane’s Musical Journey.  Rather than enhance the emotional barometer of the artist, this feels somehow indulgent, not so much about Coltrane as another man’s artistic vision.     

In the late 40’s and early 50’s Coltrane worked with Dizzy Gillespie, but it wasn’t until he worked with Miles Davis that his career took off, known as the “First Great Quintet,” which disbanded after Coltrane’s heroin addiction, with Davis aggravated by his unreliability, but once he experienced what he described as “a spiritual awakening,” getting completely off drugs and alcohol, where he’s more clear-headed and sharper mentally, his music changed.  Spending time under the tutelage of Thelonious Monk, with his unique sense of time and composition, refining his skills, learning about harmonic progression, he worked alongside Monk at the Five Spot Café in a 6-month residency in the latter half of 1957 before rejoining Miles Davis in 1958, recreating a small band that simply changed the course of jazz, performing in a quintet/sextet that primarily spotlighted the introverted Coltrane, who was solitary yet driven, serving as a catalyst, providing a greater depth of expression that Davis was seeking.  Miles saw in Coltrane an intelligent, deeply probing and creatively inventive artist mirroring the professionalism in how he viewed himself, often lacking in fellow musicians.  What sustained and influenced Miles in his relationship with Coltrane was not only his sound and the innovation of his improvisations, but the quality of their musical dialogue together, exploring various relationships of intervals in chord construction and melodic variation, reacting in conversations to one another onstage, where Miles was lyrical and succinct, while Coltrane was more rhapsodic.  Offstage they had diametrically opposite personalities, as Coltrane was quiet, pensive, and self-critical to a fault, practicing obsessively, while Davis was arrogant, cocksure, and demanding, surrounded by the company of friends, often venturing into the public eye.  But once they took the stage they reversed roles, as Coltrane was more freely uninhibited in his constant exploration, while Davis became the more sensitive introvert, often muted and hushed, exuding vulnerability.  Miles quickly realized that Coltrane was not just a great sideman, but the perfect counterpoint to his own subdued trumpet.  According to Miles, “After we started playing together for a while, I knew that this guy was a bad motherfucker who was just the voice I needed on tenor to set off my voice.”  Their contrasting approach was even more pronounced during impromptu performances, as Coltrane was obsessing over harmonic variation and would take even more extended time for his improvisations, as his solos grew longer and longer, rare for Davis to allow, but he couldn’t silence this magical voice.  When they stepped into a recording studio, they first recorded Milestones - Miles Davis - (Full Album) (48:00), legendary in its own right, and then M I L E S D A V I S - Kind Of Blue - Full Album (1:18:05), the most successful jazz album in history.  In 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution that honored it as a national treasure, sumptuous and vital music that’s alternately exhilarating and emotive, rhythmically dynamic and smoothly flowing, complex and easy on the ear.  It’s music that defies classification.  What had been great jazz from the earlier 1955-57 Davis quintet, now broke through to a category of timelessness, finally fulfilling the promise of their collaborative magic.  But Coltrane’s self-assurance only grew in stature, literally outgrowing the group, feeling straightjacketed by the small combo format, needing more time to explore on his own, heading his own group and releasing his own album John Coltrane - Giant Steps (2020 Remaster) [Full Album] (37:32) just a few weeks afterwards, writing all of the compositions himself, including the hauntingly beautiful composition named after his wife, Naima - YouTube (4:25), allegedly Coltrane’s favorite.  It was a declaration of creative independence, acknowledging Coltrane’s arrival as a fully matured, triple threat, a soloist, bandleader and composer.  His musical vision was leading him in a direction away from Miles, who sensed Coltrane drifting away.  While there’s nary a contrary word spoken against him in the entire film, which, in itself, is remarkable, Coltrane was a man of few words, who let his music speak for him.  Jazz critic Ira Gitler coined the term “sheets of sound” to describe his style, as he strung together arpeggios so dense that his saxophone seemed to play multiple notes at once.

A creative restlessness continually propelled John Coltrane, becoming fanatical about practicing and developing his craft, practicing “25 hours a day” according to Jimmy Heath, who recalled an incident in a San Francisco hotel after a complaint was issued, so Coltrane took the horn out of his mouth and silently practiced fingering for a full hour.  Before Coltrane, jazz was urban music, expressing a mournful, existential sound of the city, but Coltrane took that sound and honed it down to its transcendent core, becoming an affirming and ecstatic sound of faith.  First he moved to the soprano sax to produce variations on a mainstream show tune from The Sound of Music that became an extremely popular crossover hit, My Favorite Things - John Coltrane [FULL VERSION] HQ (13:46), featuring Jimmy Garrison on bass, the free-flowing style of Elvin Jones on drums, and the remarkably inventive McCoy Tyner on piano, whose foundational layers of chordal support were complimentary, yet revolutionary in their own right.  Coltrane divorced his first wife, where heated acrimony in the household was simply never previously seen, as both were inwardly reserved, but he met pianist Alice McLeod at the club Birdland, got married and raised a family with three children.  By all indications both were gentle spirits, quiet and inwardly spiritual, yet home movie videos reveal these were the happiest years of his life, relaxed and content with his new role as a father, seen smoking his pipe in the back yard, playing with a dog and the couple’s children, while continuing to explore the outer and inner realms of his spiritual dimensions, disappearing into an attic above the garage in their home on Dix Hills, Long Island, eating only sporadically while remaining sequestered, working on a new musical composition, but when he was finally finished, sheet music in hand, according to his wife, “it felt like Moses coming down from the mountain.”  Shaped by his inner faith, it would be his opus jazz record, a four-part suite called A Love Supreme, John Coltrane - A Love Supreme [Full Album] (1965) YouTube (32:48), which was released in 1965, his pinnacle studio outing and one of the most acclaimed jazz records ever, surpassed only by Kind of Blue, Top 25 Jazz Albums of All Time, widely recognized as a work of deep spirituality with an underlying religious subtext, a journey into the realms of religious exaltation, a hymn-like anthem of love offering peace and supreme praise to God.  Carlos Santana insists that he plays the music whenever entering hotel rooms, cleansing the surroundings of any lingering evil spirits, keeping the bad vibes away.  Among the more compelling aspects of the film is its drive to an emotionally poignant finale, where one of the film’s most powerful sequences comes with the stark black-and-white footage of protesters being attacked with water hoses and police dogs in the wake of the tragic Birmingham bombing as Coltrane’s haunting Alabama plays, John Coltrane - Alabama YouTube (5:09).  He wrote the song in response to the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing (1963) - National Park ..., a moving lament written in memory of four little girls who were murdered by a Ku Klux Klan bombing, where the mournful melody was inspired by the spoken cadence of Rev. Martin Luther King at the eulogy, as Elvin Jones’s drumming rises from a whisper to a pounding rage.  When Dr. Cornel West speaks of the work, “Martin Luther King Jr. and John Coltrane, hand in hand, represent the best of the human spirit.”  Coltrane’s group grew more avant garde, free from all constraints and barriers, where the music was pure improvisation, throwing themselves into abstract world music and the free jazz movement where solos could last for more than an hour, with many in the audience walking out, as Coltrane was going further out there in the cosmos than most listeners wanted to go.  According to John Densmore, “He had the right to go out as far as he wanted,” while saxophonist Wayne Shorter claimed Coltrane was preoccupied with the “seeking of universal truth.”  Coltrane’s last tour was across Japan, where he was embraced as a national hero.  In Nagasaki he asked to be taken to the Nagasaki Peace Park Memorial constructed on the site where the atomic bomb was dropped in WWII, a sacred place to the Japanese people, where he stood for some time meditating on the ghastly experience.  The centerpiece of the music played that night was entitled Peace On Earth, Peace On Earth (Live At Shinjuku Kosei Nenkin Hall, Tokyo ... YouTube (25:01), a transcendent work demonstrating not just a deep compassion for the country and its people, but the suffering they endured after the atomic bombing.  Introducing Coltrane that night was Yasuhiro “Fuji” Fujioka, who has authored five books on Coltrane, and may be the #1 collector of Coltrane memorabilia in the world, building a shrine called The Coltrane House in Osaka, コルトレーン・ハウス - livedoor, filled with every record and all the memorabilia he could attain.  His obsession with Coltrane started in high school when he heard him on the radio, feeling it was an utter revelation, a feeling that never left him.  During the end of the tour Coltrane complained of side pain and died suddenly at the young age of 40 from liver cancer, happening very quickly, taking the world by surprise.  Coltrane left behind a catalogue of musical recordings that include all the various phases he went through in his creative development, with President Clinton indicating “He kind of did everything Picasso did, in about 50 years less time,” while his wife Alice Coltrane observed, “He always explored higher vistas knowing that there is always something higher, something greater.”