The Facts:
Synopsis: Musician Jon Batiste sets out to compose a symphony. Then, his life partner, author Suleika Jaouad, learns that her cancer is back. This documentary is a portrait of two artists at a crossroads and a meditation on art, love, and the creative process.
Stars: Jon Batiste, Suleika Jaouad
Director: Matthew Heineman
Rated: PG-13
Running Length: 104 minutes
TMMM Score: (3/10)
Review: In 2017, during a jam-packed trip to NYC, I was lucky enough to score a seat in the audience for a taping of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on CBS. At home, viewers see a breezy program that runs under an hour, an edited-down version of what we who were there saw. This can be beneficial if an interview is a little rough and needs some tweaking in the editing bay to make it not so awkward (I won’t name names, but an actress who starred in Terms of Endearment, known for being difficult was a guest and purposefully gave poor Colbert nothing to work with – yet in the show that aired they came across downright affable.)
You also don’t see the enormous amount of crowd work leading up to the mid-afternoon taping and throughout the various breaks that are taken. A Late Show warm-up artist handles some of this, but most of it was in the hands of bandleader Jon Batiste. With an unyielding amount of energy and magnetic charisma, Batiste did everything he could to keep spirits high, and the audience whipped up into the kind of frenzy that would make you think we were all being whisked away to Rome. I’ve never clapped louder or harder in my life on the urging of Batiste to stay hyped. At one point, I looked at my palms and realized I had never seen them so drained of blood for all the applause I’d been maniacally giving.
All this is to say I’ve witnessed firsthand the power Batiste can have over a crowd and recognize the quality of his talent over the ensuing years as he’s broken big as a bona fide star of the music world. An Oscar winner (for composing the score for Pixar’s Soul) and multiple Grammy winner, the Julliard-trained multi-hyphenate born in Louisiana is the subject of American Symphony, a new documentary from Oscar-nominated director Matthew Heineman. In this doc, produced by Barack and Michelle Obama, Batiste is tracked over seven months as he lingers at a significant turning point of fame and personal struggles when his longtime partner’s leukemia returns.
It’s challenging to approach a critique of a documentary such as American Symphony because it’s so deeply personal that one feels like they are ostensibly reviewing an individual’s life and what they have chosen to be vulnerable and share with the world. However, Batiste and partner Suleika Jaouad have gone there with Heineman, opening a door that can’t easily be closed. The film is at its best when it takes in the silence of Jaouad and her continued journey through the ravages of leukemia. A bestselling author who detailed her first battle with the disease in her novel Between Two Kingdoms, Jaouad is a serene presence throughout who is unfortunately shuttled off to the side in favor of Batiste and his other pursuits.
That may sound harsh, and I don’t believe that’s how the couple’s relationship exists, but it’s how Heineman shows it to have happened in American Symphony. Amid Jaouad’s barrage of tests, chemotherapy, a painful bone marrow transplant, and a difficult recovery, Heineman’s camera follows Batiste as he travels around the country shaking hands and readying for his Grammy performances. On Grammy night, a brief conversation with Jaouad (by then his wife) is shown, but Batiste seems to want to be in the moment of revelry more than anything. Shots of Jaouad watching with friends/family at home come off as celebratory but with more than a touch of melancholy at being unable to partake in the joy.
Had the film taken time to truly address this dichotomy of emotions (happy one moment and then crushing sadness the next), it would have given American Symphony a bit more of a soul to warm to. Still, it’s a chilly watch, an aloof view of a public figure who is always aware a camera is following him. Without identifying anyone or anything onscreen, we never have a sense of time, place, or person or if Batiste is talking to someone in the room or himself. Often, he goes from voiceover narration to speaking to himself to dialoguing over Zoom with collaborators, sometimes in the string of one or two sentences.
Undeniably gifted musically, I found Batiste lacking (again, as presented in the film) in self-awareness of how he might be coming across. Toiling away at the titular symphony that is held at the climax of the film, we see him weighed down by the burden of pulling it all together and agonizing over the many decisions he must make…while his wife is in the next room recovering from a bone marrow transplant. Again, if there ever were a time when Heineman found a moment to include some sliver of thought when Batiste may have alluded to the fact that all his current strain doesn’t compare to staring death in the face (for a second time!), I might have warmed to this out-of-tune Symphony more.
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