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Remarkable New Docs on Miles Davis and Water by Karl F. Cohen
Maverick trumpeter and musician Miles Davis, circa 1958. image: courtesy M. Davis
TWO EXCITING NEW FILMS ABOUT TO
premiere in the Bay Area show how remarkable, yet different, the creative edge of the documentary medium can be.
In the same day, I saw “Miles Davis, Birth of the Cool” and “Aquarela”, the former about the famous jazz trumpeter, the latter a remarkable work of art that pays homage to the dangerous and threatening power of water, a power that can kill and destroy. Like the thrilling "Sea of Shadow", which I reviewed last month, both films advance documentary filmmaking, however, they go in totally different directions, resulting in each achieving unique forms of greatness.
“Miles Davis, Birth of the Cool” dares to take on an extremely complex character, a man who was a musical genius but with a really flawed personality. Director Stanley Nelson, who did “Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution" (2016, see cineSOURCE article), manages to carefully explain how Miles’s greatness evolved around his behavior.
Nelson’s narrative is constructed so the film flows smoothly from his days as a teenager who had his own dance band, to traveling to NY to study classical music at Julliard and meeting Charlie Parker, his musical idol. It goes on to follow Davis becoming the musical legend who created what was known as “cool jazz.” Recognized as a superstar in his final years, he was treated as a pop celebrity who made frequent TV appearances.
Unfortunately, Davis’s life behind the scenes is interrupted with numerous personal conflicts, which Nelson explores honestly. Although some of it not at all complementary. that discussion is critical to understanding how changes in his personal life influenced his music with a direct correlation at times between both positive and negative events.
Miles Davis continued innovating in new fashions as well as music in the 1980s. image: courtesy M. Davis
For example, one happy period began with his falling in love with Frances Taylor Davis, who died last year at 89. Unfortunately, it ends with his violent physical abuse of her. There are frank discussions about other women in his life and how their relationships influenced his music.
There are also details about his troubled use of drugs, his giving up playing for long periods of time due to pain and depression, even a shocking discussion about his painful encounter with a racist NY policeman.
One of the Nelson’s themes concerns the importance of money to Davis and how that need motivated changes in his music. He wasn’t a musician who could sit back and rest on his laurels. He loved owning Ferrari sports cars and fine tailored clothing. To afford the luxuries he enjoyed, he challenged himself to stay current as the public’s tastes in popular culture changed.
When sales of jazz records plummeted due to the public preference for rock, he adopted more contemporary sounds. As tastes in music changed, he enjoyed keeping his music fresh by working with younger hip musicians including Carlos Santana.
While some documentaries run out of steam after an hour, this film is just getting started. If you are not a jazz fan you may lose interest in the film, but as a kid I saw Miles Davis in concert more than once and enjoyed owning some of his LP records. I appreciated his art then and I still enjoy listening to his music.
Yes at times, he was a vain, callous, and controversial, but he was a brilliant innovative artist who broke with conventions and created new sounds. Although he must have been satisfied with his accomplishments, he went on and on to surprise the world with further phases of his work. In addition to being an innovator who played bebop with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie and created “cool jazz,” he explored working with modern quintets, orchestral music, jazz fusion, funk, rock ‘n’ roll, and even hip-hop. The film opens at the Roxie in San Francisco on September 6.
The second impressive documentary I previewed was “Aquarela”, an intense experimental film experience that is probably quite different from any film you are familiar with. It is a beautiful study of weather at its worst. The photography is excellent, but it is a disturbing essay built around various dangerous moments in a world full of ice, wind and water.
Victor Kossakovsky, a Russian filmmaker, chose to document the dangers of water in all its forms. image: courtesy V. Kossakovsky
The journey you experience starts on a frozen body of water (actually a giant lake in Russia) with a few brave men fleeing as the ice is breaking up a few weeks sooner than expected. They are trying to pull a SUV out of the lake that has crashed through the ice. The drama we witness is real.
Next the journey takes us past enormous glaciers that are beginning to disintegrate. Eventually a two-masted sailboat is seen, hopefully a safe distance from the falling ice. That section continues with the boat venturing into a sea chocked full of icebergs while the weather is turning treacherous.
There is almost no dialog in the entire film, leaving you to imagine any details you might want to know. The soundtrack in the first part is mostly the sound of ice cracking, breaking and glaciers falling apart and crashing into the sea. Then modern symphonic and hard rock music begins to accompany the visuals. As you might expect the music and visuals keep building into a powerful climax and that is followed by a lull before an even more ferocious storm.
The project was headed by Victor Kossakovsky, a Russian filmmaker who is credited as director, editor, cinematographer, and writer; however, the full credits include an extremely long list of names and titles. Sections of the film were shot by different crews in Greenland, Norway, Denmark, Russia, Scotland, the USA and several other countries. Well over 100 people were involved in the production.
Visually, to gain maximum sharpness of details some of it was filmed at 96 frames a second. It is being shown in theaters with special projectors that will be playing it at 48 frames a second, instead of the standard 24. That means scenes of glaciers disintegrating and shots of artic ice flowing to the ocean are slightly sped up to make the action seem even more dramatic.
Kossakovsky, who shot as well as directed, on another one of his dangerous camera platforms. image: courtesy V. Kossakovsky
The soundtrack uses Dolby’s new Atmos System and you actually feel the sound vibrations at times. I saw it at the AMC Metreon 16 in a new extra wide hall with an enormous screen. I was overwhelmed by the film and soundtrack while sitting in exceedingly comfortable, reclining and extra wide chairs which are motorized so you can adjust them to what you believe is the most comfortable position. The only thing that seemed missing from this presentation was a mist system so the audience could feel the weather.
The film’s press release says, “‘Aqurela’ is a visceral wake-up call that humans are no match for the sheer force and capricious will of the Earth’s most precious element.” The film opens August 23 at the Metreon in San Francisco, August 30; in Pleasant Hill, San Jose, and San Rafael; Sept. 6 in Santa Rosa; Sept. 13 in Santa Cruz and Sept. 20 in Sacramento.
Karl F. Cohen—who decided to add his middle initial to distinguish himself from the Russian Karl Cohen, who tried to assassinate the Czar in the mid-19th century—is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached .Posted on Aug 17, 2019 - 07:38 AM