I’m not exactly an avid cinema-goer but I couldn’t resist taking a short trip into Dublin to see Everybody Digs Bill Evans, a biographical drama about the late great jazz pianist Bill Evans, the trailer for which is above.
I suppose Bill Evans is best known for his wonderful contributions to what many people regard as the greatest jazz album of all time, Kind of Blue which was released in 1959. This film, however, focuses on the period after he had left the Miles Davis band that made that album in order to pursue a career leading a piano trio. It could be argued that it was this step that led to Bill Evans’s most important contribution to the evolution of jazz because he basically created the modern piano trio, converting it from what it had been before – a pianist with bass and drum backing – to an equal partnership of the three diverse instruments. To put such a combination together required him to find musicians of equal creativity and understanding, and he found them when he formed his first regular trio with the brilliant Scott LaFaro on bass and Paul Motian on drums. In a short period that band made four superb albums (two in studio, Portrait in Jazz and Explorations, and two live, Sunday at the Village Vanguard and Waltz for Debby). Astonishingly, the music for the two live albums was recorded on the same day, 25th June 1961.
Just when it seemed a wonderful future was opening up for the trio, tragedy struck. Bassist Scott LaFaro was killed in a car accident, just 10 days after the Village Vanguard date. He was just 25 years old. Evans was completely devastated by this event, so much so that he stopped playing completely for several months. He was paralysed by grief. For a man whose whole life revolved around playing the piano this was an indication of the depth of the bereavement he felt. It also made Evans sink even deeper into the heroin habit he was already struggling with.
The film focusses on the the period after LaFaro’s death, when Bill Evans stays in New York City with his brother Harry (who was also a musician) before his escalating drug use forces him to leave in order to detox with is parents in Florida. It’s essentially a portrait of a man’s struggles with grief and his inner demons, and is at times grim but it is keenly felt and very absorbing. Bill Evans was a shy and introverted man who found his own talent hard to cope with, and was consequently very insecure, but the film does not try to turn him into some kind of martyr. Neither does it try to come up with a glib “explanation” of his heroin addiction. Like the complex harmonic progressions that abound in the music, not everything has a straightforward resolution. The honesty of the film is one of its greatest strengths.
The look of the film is very “art house”. Shot (mostly) in stark black-and-white (see the trailer), it makes striking use of light and shadow. In places it reminded me a lot of Night of the Hunter. Another interesting thing is that although it is set largely between New York and Florida, it was actyually shot in Ireland!
Mark O’Halloran’s script avoids a linear narrative, instead jumping backwards and forewards, giving the story a dreamlike quality. For example, flash-forwards to the 1970s are shot in vibrant saturated colour to contrast with the monochrome of the rest of the film. These sequences are previews of yet more tragedy in Evans’s life: the deaths by suicide of his partner Ellaine Schultz in 1973 and his brother Harry Evans in 1979. Bill Evans himself passed away in 1980.
Finally I have to take my hat off to Norwegian actor Anders Danielsen Lie for his utterly compelling performance as Bill Evans. I can’t think of many examples of an actor so completely inhabiting such an enigmatic role. I suppose he was helped because there are quite a few examples of Evans playing and talking on film, but even so it was a standout performance.
Everybody Digs Bill Evans is highly recommended, and not only for jazz fans! It’s showing at The Lighthouse and the Irish Film Institute in Dublin.
P.S. The title of the film is the same as that of a studio album made by an earlier manifestation of the Bill Evans Trio, with Sam Jones on bass and Philly Joe Jones on drums, before he teamed up with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian.
P.P.S. Since Autumn is coming on, here’s my favourite track from Portrait in Jazz with Bill Evans, Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian showing what they could do.
