Filmmaker Bruce Weber's stunning documentary on Chet Baker is the best jazz docu I've seen. It's engaging, sad, revealing, challenging, with a sound track of Baker's music, especially vocals, which gives the film its angelic irony, the voice of an angel narrating near tragic moments.The contradiction between an artist's life and art is more common than documented. In this layered film/music story, there are many lenses through which to see this: the lyrical romantic musical lines, the drug addiction, the boyish playfulness, the con man's games, the dark demons, all merged into the ocean of a life. We get the contrast of images, the older dissipated Baker at the time of the film's shooting, not long before his death, against photographs and archival footage of the Hollywood handsome young sensation in Los Angeles in the early 50s.
How do we explain the contradiction between the art and the life? Maybe the best approach comes from folk bluesman Dave Van Ronk in another fine musical biopic, "The Ballad of Ramblin' Jack" by his daughter. Ronk tells Elliott's daughter that, Sure, you're making this film because you lost your father but listen, if you had a father, I wouldn't have Ramblin' Jack, and he's not someone I want to give up.
Let's Get Lost
As Though I Had Wings (memoir)
Best of Gerry Mulligan & Chet Baker
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