SOUNDTRACK TO A COUP D'ETAT - Mark Reviews Movies

Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat, Kino Lorber

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 14, 2024

Director Johan Grimonprez's Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat puts together multiple stories—of international and internal politics, of music, of espionage and attempted or successful assassinations, of the long history of colonialism and the fight against it. The narrative here, though, revolves around the independence of and resulting civil strife within the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which became an unwitting battleground of the Cold War and the target of many schemes, plots, and political interference on the part of several other countries. There is so much information to take in and process over the course of this movie that it's overwhelming.

Grimonprez doesn't help the feeling of overload with the form of this documentary. It's an onslaught of archival footage and interviews, on-screen text with detailed footnotes, and so many players in the horrific game that was played with the lives of ordinary people in Congo. They thought they had gained independence from Belgium in 1960, but that country wasn't going to give up a land rich in rare natural resources so easily.

The United States wasn't going to have it, either, especially since the main resource of Congo was uranium. There were atomic bombs to manufacture, after all, in the United States' arms race with the Soviet Union to ensure a genuinely mad policy of "mutual assured destruction."

The number of players here is vast, with President Dwight D. Eisenhower publicly keeping his distance from Congolese politicians, while reportedly suggesting the assassination of the more "troublesome" ones, and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev taking the side of the possible reformers, for whatever ends involving those uranium reserves and propaganda he may have wanted. There are also Belgian officials, including their king, who appears to take personal insult when a Congolese politician speaks out of turn at a ceremony, and too many intelligence personnel to name or other list.

Many in the latter category speak in riddles years after the Congo Crisis, hinting at plans for political murder and the use of mercenary forces, who also speak here with frightening candidness. One mercenary leader slyly talks of having soldiers ready for a particular mission, and once they are called in to escalate the internal tensions of Congo those mercenaries are comfortable speaking of their targets as "animals" and taking pride in killing Black people.

This is, perhaps, the bigger picture of Grimonprez's documentary, which also implicates the United Nations for staying on the sidelines, even after admitting multiple independent African nations and seeing overwhelming support for measures against colonialism in their official votes. What people do and say in public isn't necessarily what they actually believe, and although the powers of Belgium and the United States were diminished in the UN by various coalitions, their economic interests, intelligence sway, and military might were still more influential than any official resolution.

We haven't even discussed the specific players in Congo or, for that matter, the reason behind the title of this documentary. At a certain point, it becomes clear that Grimonprez, in his search for some higher truth about the insidious nature of colonialism as a destructive and continuing force, has lost the plot of his narrative.

Almost secondary here are the Congolese figures, primarily Patrice Lumumba—a beer salesman who became a popular political mover and Congo's first prime minister before the coup—and Moïse Tshombe—a political rival who was the figurehead of a secessionist movement that kept the largest uranium mine in Belgian control. As for the American jazz musicians who make up most of the soundtrack, they are unknowing pawns in CIA operations, running under the guise of cultural diplomacy, and, in the case of some of them, gradually realizing that the machinations enacted against Congo are a reflection of racist policies within the United States. Malcolm X, yet another player here, puts that plainly.

Within the context of the movie, though, the presence of musicians like Louis Armstrong, Nina Simone, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, and Dizzy Gillespie, who starts a presidential campaign, seems more like a hook than a real necessity to the narrative. It means the music drives the story, through its assorted angles and intrigues and sources of outrage, but those musicians, like the music itself, are always in the background of more significant events.

The movie keeps piling on details and introducing new figures, who include author In Koli Jean Bofane, interviewed directly the filmmakers to offer his perspective of growing up in Congo. The narrative begins to feel like a maze of global politics, the domestic politics of several countries, intersecting and conflicting interests in the midst of the Cold War, and selected and selective personal stories that are eventually forgotten or overlooked with so much else happening.

Lumumba, for example, might be the most important person in this story, since his rise to power and insistence on Congolese sovereignty against foreign interests drive almost every action that happens within and against the country. His fate, though, is almost an afterthought in a climax that jumps forward in time and finally resolves with a protest at the UN.

Obviously, this is an ambitious documentary, thorough in its aims, research, and presentation. Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat, however, becomes as confounding as it does enlightening, simply because the movie offers so much information that it's difficult to grasp a bigger point among its little details.

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