Jazz on Screen

What happens when the music suddenly stops? In 1961, jazz pianist Bill Evans loses his bassist and closest musical companion, Scott LaFaro. Evans stops playing too. Grant Gee turns that silence into the starting point for an unconventional biopic, led by a phenomenal Anders Danielsen Lie as the brilliant yet troubled pianist. Winner of the Silver Bear for Best Director.

New York, 1961. Bill Evans has found his musical voice – and his dream trio. During a legendary series of concerts at the Village Vanguard, Evans, drummer Paul Motian and bassist Scott LaFaro record two albums in a single day that will go down in jazz history. Ten days later, LaFaro is killed in a car accident. Paralysed by grief, Evans does not touch his piano for months. Grant Gee, known for music documentaries such as Joy Division, makes that abrupt silence the beating heart of an unconventional biopic. Based on Owen Martell’s novel Intermission and carried by a phenomenal Anders Danielsen Lie, the film moves associatively through Evans’ life. Bathed in high-contrast black and white, it shifts between intoxication and clarity, family and music, self-destruction and the urge to create. Gee, awarded the Silver Bear for Best Director, looks beyond the familiar image of the tortured genius to the human being behind the piano.