Keith Jarrett is an American jazz pianist and composer renowned for his virtuosic improvisational performances, most famously the one that flowed through his fingers at the Opera House in Cologne on the night of January 24, 1975 — the recording of which remains the best-selling solo album in the history of jazz and piano. By flouting all conventions in the face of rock and roll and making a mellifluous spectacle of the music that moved through his body like a thought from God, Jarrett has become a peerless symbol of artistic purity, his talent singular, his every note sui generis.
By contrast, Ido Fluk’s “Köln 75” — a passable “we’re putting on a show!” movie about the mad scramble to stage “The Köln Concert” — is the kind of lightly amusing pop confection that starts with a “freeze frame, record scratch, ‘you’re probably wondering how I got here’” moment before hitting a million different beats that are designed to feel pre-digested and familiar. Sex! Rebellion! Daddy issues! A terse road trip where the tension between two people gives way to mutual respect! It’s all crammed in here without apology.
Which is to say it’s no wonder that Jarrett, who loathes self-mythology and has always insisted that “music should go as quickly as it comes,” wanted nothing to do with the project. Even if Fluk (“The Ticket”) had adopted the “I’m Not There” approach and made a film whose form more closely reflected the artistry of its subject, my sense is that Jarrett still would have given the whole thing a hard pass.
But the saving grace of “Köln 75” — and what makes the labored fun of this movie worth savoring on its own terms — is that Jarrett isn’t really its subject. Nor is he Fluk’s protagonist. Instead, an irrepressible 18-year-old girl named Vera Brandes embodies both of those things, and the story here ultimately belongs to her. As Michael Chernus (playing a composited “Melody Maker” journalist named Mick Watts) says directly to the camera in the opening moments of a yarn that just loves to break the fourth wall: “This is not a film about the Cologne concert.” Eagerly comparing Jarrett’s show to the Sistine Chapel, Mick continues: “It’s not about the mural, or the ceiling, or even Michelangelo. It’s about the scaffolding.”
Brandes was the scaffolding that held up one of music’s greatest nights, and by focusing on the defiant fearlessness that bound her to a jazz god like Jarrett, Fluk is able to bend the been there, heard that conventions of a standard music biopic into a genuinely enjoyable tribute to the legends behind the legends. To the people who make it possible for artists to make the impossible. If “Köln” 75 is ultimately forgettable despite its fun, well, perhaps that’s the most fitting way of all to honor the ethos of Jarrett’s music.
While the safe functionality of Fluk’s script might seem to undermine the radical nature of improvisational jazz, “Köln 75” nevertheless manages to articulate a core truth of Jarrett’s performances: They were less motivated by Mozart-like confidence than they were by a profound fear of failure. It’s a fear that young Vera (Mala Emde, convincingly both free-spirited and laser-focused all at once) feels in her bones. The daughter of a severely disapproving dentist (Ulrich Tukur) who witnessed World War II from the heart of Germany and still seems to think that women’s lib is the worst thing that’s ever happened to his country, Vera is a perfect vessel for rebellion.
She loves marching in the street, seducing older men (though all men are older than she is), and stalking the local jazz clubs where they tend to hang out. “Shouldn’t you be listening to rock and roll?” someone asks. “I don’t like being told what to do,” Vera replies. And by this point in its popularity, rock and roll already feels more like complicity than subversion. Jazz is dying (“It’s museum music,” as one character puts it), which is all the more reason why it sparks Vera to life.
Her vitality leaves quite the impression on saxophonist Ronnie Scott (Daniel Betts), who fends off the girl’s advances even as he’s dazzled by her willpower. He won’t sleep with her, but he will hire her to handle the rest of his tour. It doesn’t matter that Vera has less than zero experience, Ronnie just can’t imagine that anyone else would be able to turn her down. He’s right about that. It isn’t long before Vera recognizes her own power, makes a name for herself, and — after crossing paths with Mick — becomes determined to book Jarrett (a squirrely and convincing John Magaro) at the most prestigious venue in all of Cologne. He plays against the piano, as Mick puts it, and that means he plays for people like Vera.
She’ll have to borrow 10,000 Deutsche Marks to host the show, and Jarrett will have to go onstage at 11:30 p.m. after the opera theater has already staged a full production of Alban Berg’s demanding “Lulu,” but Vera sees this mad idea as her best chance to prove her dad wrong and publicly spit in his face. Of course, if Jarrett doesn’t make it to Cologne in time, or if Vera can’t find the right piano for him before the curtain goes up, the whole thing could easily turn into a life-defining fiasco. Cue the prefab suspense, some of which is the stuff of pure fiction (e.g., Mick’s road trip with Jarrett, which allows us to understand the musician on a more personal level, and to better appreciate how he suffers for and surrenders to his art), and some of which is unbelievably true (e.g., Vera’s last-minute scramble to replace the busted old Bösendorfer that Jarrett refuses to play).
That may not sound like enough plot to sustain a narratively unadventurous 116-minute film, but that’s only because it isn’t. Fortunately, “Köln 75” is more rewarding for the interstitial moments that its plot makes possible than it is for the plot itself — fitting enough for a movie that isn’t allowed to include a single note from the concert itself, and is thus forced to source its fun and catharsis from the music around the music.
I don’t necessarily buy into the idea that great art is always the byproduct of the limitations imposed upon it (see: the recent work of Wes Anderson), but the story Fluk tells nevertheless taps into the role that necessity can play in the process of pure creation. This is the story of a stooped man who created something completely new because the piano he was provided was too old to produce anything else, and the story of a young woman who made that happen because the life she was offered was too old for her to survive it. Dissonance isn’t something to fear; it’s the reason why consonance sounds so beautiful.
Even the most formulaic scenes in the film bop with the zest of history being lived first-hand, as if the script were happily oblivious to its own clichés, and while the filmmaking itself falls well short of creating the chaos that it aspires to celebrate, Fluk at least taps into the fun of telling us about it. His frequent use of direct-to-camera narration initially seems like a cloying misstep (mostly because so many other movies have sucked the fun out of that device). But Chernus talks at us with the condescending zeal of a true music-lover, and his cheeky tirades about the history of jazz — and why Jarrett’s gift for improvisation is unique even in the context of such a freeform genre — are entertaining and educational in equal measure.
At one point, there’s even a delightful aside about how Can got their name, which itself speaks to the role that fate can play in the legacy of seemingly preordained artistic perfection. “Köln 75” doesn’t reflect that perfection in the slightest, nor does it try to. It simply offers a pleasant and zippy testament to the invisible — often forgotten — alchemy that goes into the making of a masterpiece.
Grade: B-
“Köln 75” is now playing in theaters.
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