A heartfelt attempt to save a bossa nova pianist’s name from oblivion as his peers die, They Shot the Piano also sees Javier Mariscal and Fernando Trueba collaborating again for the first time since 2009’s Chico & Rita.
That was a bright, busy, noir-tinged animation aiming to lever Cuban and Latin musicians back into the history of jazz using a love story as a fulcrum. Here the project is focused on an individual, Ténorio Júnior. Though the style of animation remains the same, Mariscal and Trueba don’t need to rescue bossa nova – it’s a wave that’s continued breaking ever since 1959 rolled into 1960. The title is an allusion to Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player, another 1960 breakout.
But what of Ténorio Júnior? His Bill Evans-influenced playing may have resulted in only one record under his own name but you can hear him on any number of anthology albums of the era, and he’s rated by João Gilberto, Milton Nascimento and the other grandees of bossa nova as one of the greats.
Born in 1941, Júnior vanished in March 1976, having gone out to buy a sandwich or cigarettes in the middle of the night while on tour in Buenos Aires. He was never seen again and since then it has always been assumed he was one of the many who were “disappeared” by Argentina’s military junta.
Mariscal and Trueba construct their film like a detective thriller, sending a fictional writer, Jeff Harris, off to South America to talk to people who knew Júnior and to follow a trail that eventually leads to an infamous Argentinian centre for interrogation, torture and execution. Along the way friends, family members, fellow musicians and cultural commentators tell the story of Júnior, while also fleshing out the early history of bossa nova.
The USA plays a role for good and ill. The impact of the landmark concert in New York in 1962 that catapulted bossa nova to new heights on the positive side; USA involvement in the various coups against democratic governments in Central and South America (Guatemala, Nicaragua, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Uruguay and so on) on the negative.
The style of animation is big and bold, dark at the edges, with some lovely light and shadow effects. It’s undeniably cute, though it possibly encourages Mariscal and Trueba to linger in scenes. There are simply too many talking heads in this movie, animated or not. On the upside, particularly if you’re a vain bossa nova musician of a particular vintage, animation does take the years off.
It’s Jeff Goldblum voicing Jeff Harris. A pianist himself, with several jazz albums to his name, Goldblum sounds genuinely fascinated by the story he’s relaying. And while there are traces of Goldblum quirkiness – the pauses – he dials it back. He’s engaged.
“Funny, intelligent, pure, shy, ironic,” is how Goldblum’s voiceover eventually sums up Júnior, who ironically starts to fade into the background as yet another talking head steps forward to sing his praises. More on Júnior’s background wouldn’t have gone amiss. More, too, of his music.
Would this be any worse as a podcast episode? I’m not convinced it would. But it has encouraged me to seek out Júnior’s only album as a band leader – Embalo. In fact I’m listening to its complex jazz/samba rhythms as I type. Mark that down as one pair of ears won over by Mariscal and Trueba’s project of reclamation.
They Shot the Piano Player – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2024
