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.        

The End of the Tour

THE END OF THE TOUR              B                
USA  (106 mi)  2015  ‘Scope  d:  James Ponsoldt

There’s something altogether uncomfortable about this film, and not in the obvious sense, where the construct of the film allows the audience early in the film to understand the featured character commits suicide, leaving an empty feeling in the pit of our stomachs as we then go back, retrace our steps and digest the life of a man who would eventually take his own life.  The format is reminiscent of a similar occurrence in Gus van Sant’s ELEPHANT (2003), where early on the audience hears the sound of triggers being pulled in a high school film resembling the Columbine murders.  In a sense, what follows is an artful snuff film, as it’s all about what leads us into certain death, unfamiliar territory for anyone, to be sure.  Based on American author David Foster Wallace, who took his own life September 12, 2008, his suicide is the source of the discomfort, as no words and certainly not a movie could possibly do justice to the surviving family that has to continue to deal with his loss.  Imagine having to watch a fictional version onscreen that would only reignite the pain and passion associated with that death, not to mention having to hear all the superficial talk generated by the film’s publicity, where people might describe the actors and their performances, the music, what stood out in the film, the quality of the writing, and how they may or may not have even heard of the man whose life story the film is based upon.  As the movie gets caught up in the fictionalized Hollywoodization of reality, they have to contend with the staggering loss of someone they knew and loved.  It’s admittedly a sticky situation where the director is walking upon dangerous ground, creating an unauthorized version against the expressed wishes of Wallace’s family, (Alison Flood from The Guardian, April 22, 2014, before shooting of the film began, David Foster Wallace's family object to biopic The End of the ...), and the results are to some extent uneven, partially due to the source material upon which the film is based, written by Donald Margulies, a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright and the director’s college professor at Yale, adapting journalist David Lipsky’s 2010 book, Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself A Road Trip With David Foster Wallace, a collection of conversations they had while on the road together promoting Wallace’s book, published two years after Wallace’s death. The film recreates a 5-day road trip Wallace took in 1996 with Rolling Stone writer and struggling novelist David Lipsky right after the publication of his heavily acclaimed masterwork Infinite Jest, where it’s impossible not to be reminded of Cameron Crowe and his film ALMOST FAMOUS (2000) that showcases the experiences of a young, wild-eyed Rolling Stone reporter still in his teens who goes on the road with an emerging band in the early 1970’s, a fictionalized yet autobiographical recreation of Crowe’s own experience of going on the road for three weeks with the Allman Brothers Band at the tender age of 16, where he was the magazine’s youngest-ever contributor.  This film treads on similar territory, but explores an entirely different landscape, where the artist being depicted, were he still alive, would probably have found this a contemptable exercise, as he was intensely suspicious of fame and reverential celebrity worship as the potentially dehumanizing impact of having a public persona, writing extensively about how artists lose control over their own identity and ideas when they get sucked up in the world of entertainment and Internet technology, preferring the ideas “inside” his head to the steady stream of ideas swirling around “outside” that he had no control of that were attempting to label him or easily define him using conventional pat phrases that change the meaning altogether.  “The more people think that you’re really good, actually the stronger the fear of being a fraud is,” he tells Lipsky, which is similar to author Jonathan Franzen, one of the few literary figures with whom Wallace kept in touch, deciding “not” to go on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2001 when his book The Corrections was selected to her heralded “book club,” questioning the merits of placing the book club’s “logo of corporate ownership” on the cover, as it would be betraying his core audience of readers.        

While the film never indicates, the piece was never published in Rolling Stone magazine for reasons that are never given, but one can only speculate that either the publisher felt he never had a legitimate story or the writer never figured out how to present the material.  It evokes a phone conversation Lipsky has with his employer during the Tour, when they scold him for not asking the tough journalistic questions, reminding him that he’s “a reporter, not his friend.”  A huge fan of the novel, considered one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last 20 years, Wallace is one of the director’s personal heroes, the same man who made The Spectacular Now (2013), where his motivation for making the film is largely filled with the same youthful rush of enthusiasm that Lipsky must have felt when he read the novel.  As played by Jesse Eisenberg, Lipsky is himself well-educated, but he is dwarfed by the intellectual stature of this brilliant literary sensation, always feeling as if he was in the presence of greatness.  Jason Segel is nearly unrecognizable behind the persona of Wallace, who almost always downplays his enormous intelligence and presents himself as just a regular guy, living an ordinary and unpretentious life in a modest central Illinois home with his two dogs.  The down home, folksy nature of the Midwest continually saturates the screen throughout, where the East coast bred Lipsky must feel like a fish out of water, never really finding his bearings, where the claustrophobic interior of Wallace’s home literally swallows him up, with cavernous gulfs left unfilled.  A writing professor at a local college, following in the footsteps of his parents, Wallace grew up in an exceptional academic household, remembering his parents reading Ulysses out loud to each other when they went to bed.  His father would read Moby-Dick to Wallace and his younger sister when they were 8 and 6, graduating from Amherst with the highest GPA in his class.  From an early 1987 profile written by Bill Katovsky, "David Foster Wallace: A Profile":

“Writing fiction takes me out of time,” he explains.  “I sit down and the clock will not exist for me for a few hours.  That’s probably as close to immortal as we’ll ever get.  I’m scared of sounding pretentious because anyone who writes fiction is saying, ‘Look at this thing I’ve written.’”

This is precisely the kind of thing Lipsky and Wallace discuss when they finally meet during a winter snow in Normal-Bloomington, Illinois at Wallace’s home and begin to interact, overcoming their initial tentativeness and natural shyness as they attempt an intellectual rapport.  The mammoth implications of success have already begun to be felt by Wallace, as he realizes his life is quickly changing beyond his control.  While the discussion feels overly safe, the adulation of female attention after publishing a successful book, including his views on the down-to-earth nature of Alanis Morissette whose poster graces a wall in his home, the question of a lasting relationship comes up, and his views on kids, while Lipsky never goes anywhere without his handheld, cassette-driven tape recorder whose red light is invariably always on.  While both are exceedingly polite, it’s clear that Lipsky is awed by this one-of-a-kind mentor, wondering what it would be like to be him, where his mind is filled with naiveté and childish illusion, often stunned by some of the unintentional revelations of a man who has spent the better part of his life fighting an ongoing war with depression, including suicidal idealizations.  Lipsky longs for Wallace’s success while completely missing the profound nature of his thoughts on depression.  The depth of these private confessions have a way of separating the two, as one is in possession of this kind of devastatingly intimate personal knowledge while the other doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about, but can only imagine, as in his mind all he sees is a heralded “genius.”  On their flight to Minneapolis, Lipsky follows up by asking about Wallace’s hospitalization for suicidal thoughts, which has the effect of stopping the conversation dead in its tracks.  For one, it’s a routine question he feels required to ask, but to the other it’s a shocking invasion of privacy coming from someone he barely knows.  Clearly Wallace has been hurt and wounded by the starkness of the question, which didn’t develop in private context, but seemed to come out of nowhere in a very public place.  While the difficulty of Lipsky’s job is evident in every frame of the film, what’s also apparent is his lack of maturity and tact, including an ability to process the severity of this information in a more suitable fashion.  The man across from him is a walking time bomb, where deep-seeded inner turmoil is literally eating away at him, which he’s able to confide openly to a certain extent, but Lipsky, clumsily enough, is unable to figure out what to do with this gesture of openness.  Making matters worse, rather than defer to Wallace’s comfort zone, Lipsky openly socializes with his friends and acquaintances, as if he has free reign to interview them as well.  While Lipsky is clearly around someone he greatly admires, Wallace on the other hand has to endure this rude intrusion into his life, come what may, where occasionally he’s not too happy about it, losing patience with the innocence of his young protégé, registering his concerns, “If you wanted, I mean, you’re gonna be able to shape this essentially how you want, and that, to me, is extremely disturbing.  Because I want to be able to try and shape and manage the impression of me that’s coming across.”  The distance that ultimately develops between these two men is of cataclysmic proportions, like man and boy, where clearly Lipsky is out of his element.

To say that this film is dialogue-driven is an understatement, as it recalls the lengthy dinner conversation of Louis Malle’s MY DINNER WITH ANDRE (1981), which is more of a free spirited, two-person conversation, where they’re free to discuss anything, while Wallace and Lipsky don’t actually engage in conversation, as Lipsky is on an assignment of limited duration, where he’s free to shape the interviews as he sees fit.  So the structure throughout is centered around questions and answers, though they do occasionally spend free time with others, improbably taking a side trip to the Mall of America to watch John Travolta in John Woo’s nuclear bomb fantasy, BROKEN ARROW (1996), where Wallace is literally entranced by what he sees onscreen.  Something of a television junky, where there’s no sign of a TV in his home, he allows himself to get lost in thought as if retreating into another world.  Segel is amazing transforming himself into another figure, much like Philip Seymour Hoffman playing Truman Capote in CAPOTE (2005), and at times he can be so captivating, where words literally flow out of his mouth like literary morsels, but what continually dominates his thoughts are outcast feelings of loneliness and self-loathing.  Lipsky truly misses the mark in identifying the tormented soul of this man that continually cries out for help, but is greeted only with the sheer emptiness of silence.   A man alone with an empty page, day in and day out, is a daunting task that grows more and more ominous, especially when it becomes expected that he is supposed to fill those empty pages with unending ideas of literary wit and candor.  Instead of ever getting behind the man in the mask, the genius who has the capacity to understand what no one else can, this film centers more on the limitations of a mortal man, becoming a portrait of the flawed man asking all the curiously irrelevant questions, as they’re not leading him anywhere, as it’s never clear how truthful either one is being with each other.  Despite a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, writing a feature Rolling Stone article on a brilliant contemporary writer, something the magazine had never done before, with the chance to expose an open vein of literary terrain the readers have never experienced, there’s simply no focus in what he’s trying to accomplish.  While Lipsky is smart and clever, the gulf of knowledge between the two men who are nearly the same age is enormous, where Lipsky is so awed by the stratosphere of his intellectual superiority that he never quite sees the man, as if he’s already communicating from the beyond.  On the other hand, Lipsky’s mix of anger and jealousy, where he’s painfully aware of his own human limitations, provide the emotional journey of the film, which is largely seen through his eyes.  His frustration becomes our frustration, as he’s never able to unlock the key to Wallace’s cleverly concealed mind, or even ask what inspires him, or to share a favorite passage, including other influential literary works.  We’re never able to tap in on what drives this man to write except to escape the loneliness of his own anguished soul, having fought so many of his battles alone locked in a tiny room.  Lipsky actually has a chance to befriend a comrade in arms, but refuses to enter the field of battle.  There is something cowardly about that, where only in death does he summon the courage to reveal the contents of these conversations that form the basis of the film.  It’s a sad portrait, where Wallace’s family, friends, and associates are not involved in any way, where the final image, set to the music of Brian Eno’s “The Big Ship,” Brian Eno "The Big Ship" - YouTube (3:04), exactly the same music used in the enthralling finale of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015), but here, instead of a transforming moment, it resorts to illusion and fantasy, believing the feel good myth that Wallace suspected he wanted to hear all along, foregoing the agony of the truth.  

Postscript

To clarify a few lingering issues.

That dance sequence never happened - - is what I mean.  It was all an invention, telling the young reporter exactly what he wanted to hear by telling him a fictitious feelgood story, the kind of thing his readers would love to hear.   But it’s just a story.

By that time, things between the two men had deteriorated to the point where there simply wasn’t any truth left in the relationship between them. 

So yes, I am questioning Lipsky’s account as unreliable.  Not that he didn’t say it, but that he didn’t mean it.  By that time he couldn’t tell the difference. 

While it’s clear that an entire life is filled with peaks and valleys, where a joyful moment may have been chosen as a final image to remember.  I just got the feeling this one was completely made up. 

And Ponsoldt bought into it hook, line, and sinker, as if it was true, which is a myth that he’s feeding to the viewers.

In my view, it’s all just part of a dishonest vein that I believe runs right through this film, which is why I’m not as high on it as others.