American Symphony

A self indulgent delve into an artist who is clearly talented. I don't profess to know anything about Jon Batiste, I have heard his name mentioned every now and then. The synopsis for this documentary described it as deeply intimate but that intimacy is mostly at the mercy of carefully set up scenes in my opinion. Batiste seems like a nice man but my word the makers of this documentary made him look like a bit of a self centred and pretentious individual.

It got about an hour in and I found myself talking to the screen, clearly I wasn't falling for the nonsense. I must say that the film picked up from the Grammy awards section onwards, which is good as at that point I was verging on awarding the film a 1 star review. Jon's wife Suleika Jaouad was clearly going through a terrible cancer ordeal of which I have full empathy. I did find a lot of the scenes extremely set up especially the wedding, some of the hospital sequences and Jon on the phone to his therapist.

The part when he is performing at the piano (not during the power cut) and he waits for what feels like an eternity to begin to play was something of a low point. The audience didn't look too thrilled to watch his show.

I am unlikely to further my education into Batiste, but I am happy to part company with him knowing that I didn't dislike him as much as I did during the first hour of this documentary, than I did at the end.

At one point his wife mentions that the music playing is "emotionally manipulative", I think this sums up American Symphony perfectly.