So the Oscar nominations for the best movies of 2023 were announced this past Tuesday. There are always surprises and disappointments (now with a lot more drama because social media makes everything worse). I tend not to call them “snubs” because it’s all subjective and everyone likes what they like. But there was one big disappointing surprise in the Best Documentary Feature category. American Symphony had the pedigree of an Oscar nominee. It was directed by Matthew Heineman, my favorite contemporary documentarian (doesn’t everyone have a favorite documentarian?), who had previously been nominated for an Oscar for his magnificent Cartel Land. His fly-on-the-wall style and willingness to shoot anywhere—in Mexico with gangs cooking meth, in the emergency rooms of New York at the start of the COVID outbreak, in Syria with the journalists documenting the horrors of ISIS–have resulted in numerous accolades. The movie was backed by Higher Ground, the production company started by the Obamas in 2018 that has already won one Oscar in this category (American Factory) and been nominated for another (Crip Camp). With that resume, this should have been a no-brainer. But…
American Symphony is, on its face, an entertainment doc, which seems an odd choice for both Heineman and Higher Ground. The subject, singer/songwriter Jon Batiste, is a famous person (not the most famous, but famous nonetheless) The Academy tends to overlook such docs, possibly seeing them as not “serious” enough. But American Symphony is so much more than an entertainment doc about a famous person. The collaboration of Heineman, Batiste, and Batiste’s wife, author Suleika Jaouad, plumbs the depths of love, fear, and creativity like no other film this year. It’s both grand in its art and intimate in its central relationship. And it deserves to be considered one of the best films of the year of any kind.
The focus on Batiste the artist is primarily on the composition and Carnegie Hall performance of a wide-ranging orchestral piece bearing the same name as the film. The piece itself is a staggering exploration of the history of American music, with passages inspired by everything from Native American drum song to contemporary film scores. We regularly cut to him in rehearsal trying to squeeze specific sounds from his musicians influenced by Latin, funk, folk, opera, Louisiana jazz, and so on and so on. No film this year, or in recent memory, provides such insight into the process of creating something meant to speak to our time and also stand the test of that same time.
The creation of “American Symphony” (the piece) is interlaced with cuts of the successes of his career. Most who know the Julliard-trained Batiste before seeing the film (to be honest, I only knew him by name) might have come across him as the band leader for “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” Or from his truckload of Grammys for his album We Are. Or from his Oscar-winning score from Pixar’s Soul. Heineman and his team of co-editors effectively let us know the persona of their subject, allowing us to invest in the stakes of his newest, very different project.
But, as great as the focus on Batiste the artist is, it’s the focus on Batiste the person, partner, and eventually husband that gives the film its emotional weight. We join the couple’s life as Jaouad is going back into treatment for leukemia with has returned after years in remission. For this chapter, Jaouad gets to have very little of the glamour of life with a star. Instead, we see her dealing with chemo ports and long hospital stays as Batiste tries to give enough attention to his music while also supporting Jaouad in her far more important battle. Jaouad brings home this dichotomy, noting that she started chemo the same day Batiste was nominate for 11 Grammys. Heineman gets his trademark access here; he films the couple in the smallest moments of life–the couple in bed getting ready for a night’s sleep, Batiste talking about his anxiety in a phone conversation with his therapist, Jaouad turning to “blind contour painting” when her medication starts to affect her eyesight. The couple doesn’t seem to leave anything away from the camera–including their intimate wedding day. We grasp their deep, abiding, and sacrificial love as they try to pursue what makes them great while holding on to what makes them good.
The film has all the hallmarks of a great one. Heineman’s direction and camera work are phenomenal as always. The dual narratives effectively give us big and small, high and low to provide an emotionally satisfying watch. It has a glorious climax with the Carnegie Hall performance. But even in that performance, there’s hardship–a frustrating power outage upends things, but just for a moment, as Batiste’s instincts as a performer kick in and make it all the better. And that is just one of the things that points to Batiste as the central figure here. There are times that he seems larger than life. He’s a big personality with a million-dollar smile and kilowatts of energy to spare. But we also see him knocked around a bit to remind us of the humanity of this celebrity. Knocked around…but not knocked out. In the end, you want to cheer as his symphony comes to a resounding end.
So, the movie didn’t get its expected Oscar nomination. But, in a manner fitting for the movie, Batiste will be at the Oscars, performing his song, “It Never Went Away”…which was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Song. Even when there’s something bad, there’s also something good–a lesson the movie reminds us of over and over. Which is just part of what makes American Symphony one of the best films of the year.
American Symphony is streaming on Netflix.
(Photo credit: Netflix)