They Shot the Piano Player

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

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Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal (Chico and Rita) have another lively, animated feature on their hands with “They Shot the Piano Player,” this time with noir accents.

This film focuses on the life of Tenório Junior, an ambitious and somewhat eccentric piano player on the Bossa Nova music scene in Brazil. Tragically, at the age of 34. Tenório disappeared on the way to a neighborhood convenience store to buy a sandwich for his wife. Most say he was arrested and then killed for political reasons, either by mistake or on purpose.

The film follows a tan New York writer Jeff Harris (voiced by Jeff Goldblum) who becomes increasingly obsessed by Tenório. The writer initially sets out to write a book about Brazilian jazz. But in no time at all, Harris learns about the passion of the musician and his quiet discipline practiced in his craft, along with his abrupt disappearance and presumed murder. Harris can’t sleep and becomes consumed by the story.

The film is chock full of eye-popping lively and colorful animation. Each frame is a living comic strip with its own verve, motion, and personality. Every cell of the film pulses perfectly to the music. Palm leaves slide and sway, bending and drifting as Ella Fitzgerald voluptuously turns, a musical confection. The Jeff Goldblum-ish writer-detective is never without his dark sunglasses.

The animation and music match wonderfully. It is only during the interview scenes (and there are many) that the film gets bogged down a bit and loses its dramatic momentum. There are so many question and answer scenes that the film almost becomes a repetitive dossier of he said-she said suggestions and facts.

Most effective and poignant, however, are the scenes showing Tenório, who resembles Allen Ginsberg bespeckled and bearded, playing wistfully at the piano as smoke swirls around him, as well as scenes showing the musician sitting at the piano with his kids.

Tenório was known as being someone mystical a “Buddhist without being Buddhist.” Apparently, he was whisked away at 2 am by a sinister Ford Falcon in 1976, a black metal harbinger of Death.

The film excellently highlights the connection between music and spirituality. As a film about mystery, intrigue, and vanishing, however, the drama could use more inky pathos instead of its languid stop-motion sashays and Bossa Nova breezes.

Write Ian at ianfree11@yahoo.com