"Round Midnight" is one of my
favorite films. As I've said before, I saw it three times at the
theater when it came out. I rooted for Dexter Gordan when he was
nominated for best actor at the Oscars.
And I immediately bought the sound track. Part
of the pleasure of watching the video was listening again to the
music. (Suffice it to say, for me, these three films this week
were worth it for the music alone. So when I say music, I am
saying GLORIOUS MUSIC).
What fascinated me most about RM was that it
was told as a simple love story, a non-erotic one, but one
nevertheless, between Dale, the old sax player, and Francis, the
music lover.
The actor who played Francis (Francois Cluzet?)
was exceptional in creating a fellow who was ready to live and
die for the experience of the music. Bebop jazz seems to create
that sort of response in its advocates (and also why the
complaint "why doesn't the audience really appreciate this
music" is a common one).
His tenderness, his co-dependency in trying to
save Dale, his ability to share his life and his daughter's life
with this old man, was incredibly romantic (again, in a non-erotic
way).
I'm glad Diva shared the linked article above,
because it settled on something that always nags at me about
artists. How easy to reduce these stories to CAUTIONARY TALES.
Round Midnight doesn't do that, doesn't take us through the steps
that led to Dale's decline and fall, so to speak. Instead, it
powerful depicts his greatness and offers a darker side of him,
although the darkness isn't all that dark except that for him to
drink or use drugs meant the absence of the music, which is the
greater darkness. I think we'll all have more to say about mental
illness and art through these discussions.
Dexter Gordan was a delight. Wonderful. I don't
know how much acting he was doing or if he was just playing
Dexter. But bravo.
