Word: trueba
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...seems far too easy. Simply assemble a stunning array of talented musicians, allow them to play, roll cameras and magic should result. That's what director Fernando Trueba (Belle Epoque) was hoping for, as he embarked on his documentary-cum-music video effort, Calle 54. Trueba titled the film (54th Street) after the address of the Sony Studio where he gathered Latin music giants such as Gato Barbieri, Paquito d'Rivera and Tito Puente over 12 days in March 2000 to visually and aurally document these aging Lions of Latin music. The project proved timely, because two short months after...
...promotional material, Trueba quipped that the film "wasn't approached in [an]academic manner," which manifests itself in the way he treats his musicians. Commentary remains minimal, and is generally established in no more than one or two minutes. With a general context for their past lives and current conditions, the film delves right into the music, leaving the studio performances as the true embodiments of emotion and personality. Eliane Elias expresses understated elegance with deft and shimmering touches of twinkling piano, contrasting with Puente's cheeky, overt showmanship as he, impish and seemingly carefree, works magic on the timbale...
...Trueba transports artists into the studio, playing them up against iridescent background screens, with colors ostensibly chosen (even if they don't always fit) to reflect each piece's prevailing moods, bathing the musicians in an almost aggrandizing glow. The effect is to catapult these artists to mythic, elevated status, which befits their talents, but not their music's spirit. The studio appears too sterile, too clean compared to the art, which has its roots as a dance music and involves a long history of Dizzy Gillespie's blazing, sweat-soaked solos or Mongo Santamaria's pulsing congas. Just...
That removal, however, is stunning-absolutely stunning-in its execution. With soaring, fluid cinematography, Trueba takes the studio, normally a confining space cluttered with microphones and bulky sonic equipment, and opens it up, creating a free arena for artistic expression. Trueba's camera is sensual in its gaze as it caresses Elias' form on the piano. He lovingly traces down her slender figure, caressing her bare feet as they touch the pedals, thus turning her playing into a corporeally total experience, rather than a nexus between limbs and the mind. Alternately, when not gliding around the performers, Trueba breaks...
...brilliantly performed but somewhat contrived-but in the music's margins, when father and son Bebo and Chucho Valdes play a piano duet or when Chico O'Farril wanders aimlessly in the New York City night, the film becomes intensely real and touchingly personal. Calle 54 may indeed be Trueba's "way of repaying a debt of gratitude to Latin jazz," but for novices and the well-versed alike, it also serves to educate and foster a love of the music. Trueba has succeeded, for all the spectacle, and the cracks in between...