A major part of Armstrong’s success came from his uncanny knack for seeming to find the rainbow in every cloud. (His last chart-topper, and one of his biggest successes, was “What a Wonderful World.”) Think of him singing or speaking, and you picture him smiling or laughing. But those laughs and smiles were multilayered, sometimes calculated, and always imbued with secondary associations that eluded the general public but were crystal clear to Armstrong’s family, partners, and close friends.
The most revelatory and thrilling parts of the film are the sections where we get to hear Armstrong and his friends on tape, talking the way prominent artists and entertainers do when cameras aren’t on them and nobody in the room is looking for a “gotcha” quote. Armstrong was a great storyteller no matter what venue he was in, but it’s a special kick to hear him telling bawdy stories about his childhood in New Orleans and cutting loose with four- and twelve-letter profanities (which are as musical in his delivery as any phrase he blew on his horn).
There’s a wonderful quote from Marsalis here appreciating Armstrong’s rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner”—a song that’s an emotional and intellectual minefield for Americans who were never truly welcome in their own country—and comparing it to Jimi Hendrix’s version. Marsalis concludes that Armstrong simultaneously complicated and purified the song, transmitting complex feelings to the listener through pure technique. Reclaimed it, in a way. (Another anecdote finds James Baldwin hearing Armstrong perform the anthem, then saying that it was the first time he’d ever liked the song.)
The film takes a serpentine (and sometimes figure-eight) path through its subject life and output, using its “collage” identity to go places you might not expect it to go, often at unexpected moments. But it also sometimes leaves specific topics or period in Armstrong’s career sooner than the viewer might wish, and jumps around in time so matter-of-factly that sometimes it’s hard to immediately discern where we are in his life.
And yet those are all features of the film’s style, not bugs. This is not a traditional “and then he went there, and then he did this” movie. It’s biographical jazz that permits digressions and gives itself the freedom to jump around as it pleases. If “Black & Blues” returns to the same melody a few too many times, it doesn’t diminish the overall achievement, which feels free in a way that these sorts of films rarely do.
On Apple TV+ tomorrow, October 28th.
Sumber: www.rogerebert.com
