LOS ANGELES.- As musician Jon Batiste swept the 2022 Grammys, winning one award after another in music’s most prestigious box, his wife watched him like most people: from the couch at home on television.
Suleika Jaouad could not personally accompany him on that night of glory because she was fighting leukemia. That harsh conjunction between stratospheric success and harsh reality is the common thread of American Symphonyan intimate documentary film about the couple available on Netflix.
“I wanted it to not only be about the artistic process, but also show what it takes to achieve a level of greatness in art,” Batiste told AFP. “I also think we were showing a lesson that we didn’t know then: that creativity is a survival mechanism,” added the artist, 37 years old.
Beginning of the documentary
The project began as a documentary about Batiste’s project to write a single-function contemporary symphony inspired by music from various places around the world. But he was radically transformed when Jaouad discovered that his cancer had reappeared, almost 10 years later.
The result is, at the same time, a love story, a reflection on illness, a chronicle of family life and a tenacious review of the creative process itself.
Jaouad, 35 years old, is a renowned writer. Her first battle with cancer, a decade ago, was captured in her columns in the newspaper The New York Times.
“Negotiation” in real time
For seven months the cameras followed Batiste as he directed rehearsals, suffered from severe anxiety that kept him awake at night, talked to his therapist about wanting to quit his job, and visited Jaouad in the hospital.
“Giving cameras access to these sacred moments in our lives was a real-time negotiation,” Batiste said. “Defining limits, them pushing those limits, and us pushing back.”
During the same time, his album We Are It led the nominations for the 2022 Grammys, and beat figures such as Taylor Swift, Kanye West and Billie Eilish in the album of the year category.
But when Batiste returned from Las Vegas with his five gramophones, Jaouad was back in the hospital, facing the effects of chemotherapy and a second bone marrow transplant.
A powerful scene in the documentary shows Batiste on stage during a two-hour piano recital, before a packed auditorium.
The musician dedicates the next piece to Jaouad and then stops with his fingers on the keyboard for a minute. After this pause that seems like an eternity, he plays a moving and cathartic improvisation.
“He was processing everything in real time in front of the public,” Batiste said. “There is so much that happens, what happens in a life, that it is difficult to put it into words,” he added.
American Symphonyproduced by Michelle and Barack Obama’s audiovisual company, is emerging as a strong candidate for the Best Documentary category at the Oscars 2024.
Batiste already won an Academy Award for writing the soundtrack for the Pixar animated film Soul.
FUENTE: AFP
