THEY SHOT THE PIANO PLAYER - Mark Reviews Movies

They Shot the Piano Player, Sony Pictures Classics

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 23, 2023

A story of upbeat music and terrible history, They Shot the Piano Player ostensibly tells the story of Brazilian pianist Francisco Tenório Jr., whose career looked filled with promise until he disappeared under mysterious circumstances in 1976. He was only 34 at the time, but in his homeland and throughout the nearby region, Tenório was esteemed for his talent and his ability to bring life to music without seeking any kind of spotlight.

Something else was happening at the time of his rise to relative fame and the growing popularity of bossa nova music starting about two decades prior to Tenório's disappearance. That's partly the mystery of co-directors Javier Mariscal and screenwriter Fernando Trueba's movie, which mixes fiction and documentary in the medium of animation. It's not much of mystery, of course, and this also isn't much of a story, despite how much affection the filmmakers clearly possess for the people and the music at the heart of it.

The fiction here revolves around a New York City journalist named Jeff Harris, who's voiced by Jeff Goldblum in a slightly distracting vocal performance (The actor doesn't have much of a character with whom to work, so the filmmakers clearly hope that Goldblum's distinctive persona, erupting here in occasional improvised bits of delight, will compensate for that absence at the story's center). Jeff is at an event at a local bookstore for the release of his new work of non-fiction, documenting the story of Tenório's career and what happened to him one very late night/early morning in Buenos Aires.

Most of the narrative, then, proceeds in flashbacks, as Jeff recounts how he was initially assigned to write an article about the rise of boss nova music in Rio de Janeiro in the late 1950s. From there, he learned of Tenório, only to become fascinated with and haunted by the fact that someone so noteworthy and apolitical could be swept up in a political revolution and military dictatorship. With the blessing of his editor Jessica (voice of Roberta Wallach), Jeff changed gears from the music to the man.

Jeff's story, as he travels from New York to the region in question and seeks aid from local music expert/historian João (voice of Tony Ramos), is a thin excuse for Mariscal and Trueba's true goal. That's essentially to collect the stories of Tenório's fellow musicians, colleagues, friends, and family members, as they remember this man, what he accomplished in his short life, what was lost when he disappeared, and the gaping hole the uncertain certainty of his fate has left in their lives.

It's a noble pursuit, to be sure, especially as the filmmakers widen the narrative's perspective to include the history of military coups and the resulting dictatorships (often backed directly or indirectly by the United States at the time) throughout Latin America during the 1960s and '70s. Tenório's story is just one of countless ones, then, of lives ended, deaths left unofficial, and families and friends whose own lives become frozen in time. The doubts and mourning of interview participants are palpable in the tenor of their voices—coming through even in the face of the movie's stilted animation.

This, of course, raises the question of the movie's approach—not only in terms of the animated medium, which puts a layer of distance between the style and the cruel reality of the tale, but also in the way Trueba invents a fake framing device in order to tell this true-life story. It's difficult to determine if the movie was planned this way (Mariscal has a background in animation) or if it became a requirement, based on the limited material with which they had to work (Trueba's filmography mainly consists of historical dramas and documentaries). After a while, the latter seems more likely.

After all, the interviews aren't exactly enlightening, either about Tenório's music or his disappearance (It's technically still unsolved, although a man who worked in the makeshift prisons and torture facilities of the dictatorship offers an account of the musician's extrajudicial execution, if the story can be believed). A lot of anecdotes about and character assessments of the man are repeated by different participants, meaning that many of these interviews are redundant.

As for the music of the era, it plays in brief interludes of recordings of live performances and studio sessions, featuring luminaries of the region and period. The animation at least comes to some life in these segments, as those roughly sketched cartoons are given heavy doses of rich, bright colors. One wonders how much of these images comes from archival film and photographs, if only because the entire style of the movie feels so questionable within those other contexts.

At the core of They Shot the Piano Player is a potentially rich story of man whose life helped to define the music of his time and whose presumed death represents the terrible political history of his age. In the way it mixes narratives and mediums, the telling here, though, feels like an act of overcompensation for the simple fact that the filmmakers aren't able or willing to delve into the full truths of this story.

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