Amazon.com video review:
Like the music it celebrates, Round Midnight is long on
atmosphere, short on formal structure, alert and open to improvisation, making
this 1986 drama the most authentic glimpse of jazz yet filmed. Its subject, Dale
Turner (played by Dexter Gordon), is a composite of brilliant but bruised jazz
warriors who left America behind for self-imposed European exile, finding a more
tolerant and appreciative audience while never completely eluding their private
demons. Drugs and drink have battered the tall, laconic saxophonist, whose
diffident, somewhat distracted manner only partly conceals a deeper exhaustion
as he plays a 1959 engagement in a Parisian club and tries to stay sober. His
burnished solos drift behind the tempo with a languor that can't be fully
explained as a point of style. But when an ardent, impoverished French fan
(François Cluzet) intercepts his idol and then offers him simple acts of
kindness, the gesture inspires a brief but glowing second wind in the aging
musician, reflected in his playing. Even as the film contemplates Turner's
return to his homeland as a portent of his own death, his moments on the
Parisian bandstand suggest a glimpse of redemption.
If Turner's frail character echoes real-life ex-pats like Bud Powell and Lester
Young, director Bertrand Tavernier's insistence upon casting the role with
veteran tenor player Dexter Gordon breathes startling authenticity into the
figure. Gordon's own drug arrests and an extended idyll abroad give him direct
access to Turner's isolation, and Tavernier elicits a natural but compelling
performance that earned Gordon (who died in 1990) an Academy Award nomination.
Likewise, the director cast his cinematic band with world-class musicians,
including Herbie Hancock, Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, and Ron Carter, and
shot these sequences as live performances. Hancock's score deservedly won both
British and American Academy Awards, as well as a French César. --Sam
Sutherland
