TRACE THE PATH OF AN ICONIC JAZZMAN
Documentary with too much talk could have let Coltrane’s music speak for itself
How does one encompass the universe-expanding genius of saxophonist John Coltrane? A conventional, made-for-TV-style biopic may not be the best answer, but director John Scheinfeld does a serviceable job of taking viewers through the key talking points of the iconic jazzman — from his early days under Miles Davis through his brush with solo stardom and his untimely death from liver cancer in 1967 at age 40.
“John Coltrane could get in his spaceship and it could take him anywhere he wanted to go,” we hear at the outset, against rudimentary graphics of the solar system. Soon after, he is compared with Beethoven and Shakespeare.
Then, to whet our appetite, we are told about how he started playing in the Miles Davis Quintet, “a harbinger of everything new,” in 1955, only to be shown the door two years later when caught indulging in his bandleader’s old vice, heroin.
Rewind to 1926, North Carolina. Coltrane was born an only child in the segregated South. Both his grandfathers were Methodist ministers. He began taking an interest in the saxophone when, at age 12, his aunt, father, grandparents and uncle all died within the space of a few months. His instrument became an outlet for his pain.
There is humour in Wynton Marsalis’s observation that, in an early recording of Coltrane playing with a band in the Navy in 1946, he played “not that well. That he could go from that to
what he became is all you need to know.”
Where exactly did he go? Scheinfeld traces the path, from playing with Dizzy Gillespie’s band in 1949 to Davis, to Coltrane’s moment of truth in 1957, when he went cold turkey and left the drugs behind.
It is here that things get interesting and this documentary gets off the ground. Returning to New York, Coltrane hooks up with Thelonious Monk, then releases his solo debut, revealing to the world his spiritual inquisitiveness and great musical hunger.
Moving forward, we are led through his landmark albums Giant Steps (1960), My Favorite Things (1961) and A Love Supreme (1965), interspersed with ample commentary from everyone from Sonny Rollins and son Ravi Coltrane to Bill Clinton, Carlos Santana, Common and former Doors drummer John Densmore. Coltrane’s own words are narrated by Denzel Washington.
It’s interesting stuff, but all the talk gets in the way of the music, weighing down this formulaic documentary with a pedagogical approach.
Ultimately, we are told repeatedly, in many ways, Coltrane was searching for God, peace and love and sought to share his vision of these concepts through his art. But in working so hard to explain the musician’s mystique through the words of others, Scheinfeld keeps him earthbound.