Cast: Anders Danielsen Lie, Bill Pullman, Laurie Metcalf Review by Carol Allen This film comes as near to perfect as dammit is to swearing.
In 1961 jazz musician Bill Evans (Anders Danielsen Lie) is on a roll. He has created the perfect ensemble, which includes his close friend and bassist Scott LaFaro. In the opening shots we see them playing at New York’s Village Vanguard club, a session which was to produce two famous albums. But tragedy is indicated in the cutaways during the sequence. LaFaro is fated to be killed in a car accident at the age of 25 – a tragedy which sends Evans, already a heroin addict, over the edge.
Danielson Lee plays Evans as a thin, bespectacled, nervy chain-smoking disaster area, seeking oblivion through the heroin jags he shares with his girlfriend Ellaine Schultz (Valene Kane). His elder brother Harry (Barry Ward) visits him in his tiny, messy apartment and persuades him to come stay with him and his wife and daughter. That situation soon becomes untenable however and Bill is moved on to stay with his parents, now retired from New Jersey to the sunshine of Florida.
Dad is a garrulous, self-obsessed old boy – a brilliant performance by Bill Pullman. Bill’s mother (Laurie Metcalf,) however is far more perceptive in terms of understanding her younger son. Because one of the underlying dynamics of the family is that Harry, a music teacher but without his brother’s s talent, and possibly Dad, whose worked hard all his life at a boring job to achieve his retirement, are envious of Bill’s musical genius.
The acting throughout is superb, the period detail from the streets and dives of sixties New York to the furniture in that retirement bungalow is impeccable, all recorded in the masterly black and white photography of Piers McGrail, which is both stunningly beautiful and evocative of the period. The film then gives us a visual shock in three flash forwards to three future tragedies in Bill’s future, shot in strident, jarring colour.
This is a very strong story, brilliantly and effectively told. Anders Danielsen Lie is excellent in the lead but all the performances are good, right down to the barman in Dad’s local, who actually voices the title line of the film. It rings true as a very American story but it’s actually a European film, a UK/Ireland co-production entirely shot in West Cork with an English director and a Norwegian actor in the lead. The magic of the movies, eh?
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