Dramatising the fraught back story behind a legendary modern jazz concert from 50 years ago, Köln 75 is an enjoyably off-beat blend of biopic, historical pageant and music-geek lecture from US writer-director Ido Fluk.
The show in question was keyboard maestro Keith Jarrett’s largely improvised solo piano performance at Cologne Opera House in January 1975, a high-risk late-night event organised by precocious 18-year-old promoter Vera Brandes. It was almost cancelled in a perfect storm of crossed wires and technical problems, but later went down in history as a much-loved high watermark of contemporary music. Punctuated with Jarrett’s ecstatic sighs and impassioned groans, the live recording later became both the biggest-selling solo jazz album and solo piano album of all time, with sales of four million and counting.
The real Jarrett declined to co-operate on Köln 75, denying the film-makers use of his music. Partially paralysed following a series of strokes, the notoriously exacting 79-year-old has virtually disowned his most celebrated hit album over the decades. Fluk largely sidesteps this problem by training his focus on Brandes, a spirited young proto-feminist battling against parental disapproval and industry sexism to carve herself a place in the German music scene. The end result is a big-hearted film, a little heavy-handed in places but full of charm, celebrating not just the power of music but also the giddy idealism of youth. World premiering at the Berlinale, it is set for German theatrical release next month. The album’s 50th anniversary, which is also being celebrated in an upcoming documentary, should help give this likeable underdog yarn a boost with audiences beyond the jazz cognoscenti.
Multiple accounts of these events have already entered jazz folklore, but Köln 75 distils the essentials, drawing on first-hand input from Brandes herself. After an exhausting overnight car journey from Switzerland, the cash-strapped Jarrett (John Magaro) and his laconic tour manager Manfred Eicher (Alexander Scheer) turn up at Cologne opera house to find a smaller, inferior, partially broken rehearsal piano on stage instead of the full-sized Bösendorfer Imperial they were promised. When they threaten to cancel the show, Brandes snaps into panic mode, trying to hire a replacement piano at short notice, then calling in a pair of emergency technicians to fix the smaller instrument. After much tough-talking and arm-twisting, Jarrett grudgingly agrees to play, partly because a sound engineer was already booked to record it for possible album release. Against the odds, his emotionally charged hour-long performance becomes a sold-out triumph, scoring him a huge hit and helping to establish Brandes as a major player on the German music scene.
Rich in colourful period detail, Köln 75 boasts strong production design, even if it sometimes falls into the common biopic trap of repainting the past in broad strokes as a soapy historical pageant. Magaro does a respectful imitation of Jarrett, nervy and world-weary, but the emotional heart of this story is Emde’s fizzing screen energy as the young Brandes. Alongside her budding career as a promoter, the film also chronicles her fractious relationship with her stern father (Ulrich Tukur), a straight-laced dentist perpetually disappointed at his daughter’s disreputable “jazz bunny” image. Fluk also explores her wider bohemian 1970s milieu of soft drugs, wild parties, political activism, permissive sex and jealous lovers. “What happened to you?” a medic asks after a violent boyfriend leaves her bruised. “The patriarchy,” she quips.
The most impressive formal flourishes in Köln 75 are pure fabrications – or should that be improvisations? Always an enjoyably impish presence on screen, Michael Chernus (Severance, A Complete Unknown) plays a wry chorus role as fictionalised jazz journalist Michael Watts, who essentially stalks Jarrett on his European tour dates, pestering him for an interview that never quite comes together. There are echoes of Cameron Crowe’s sentimental rock chronicle Almost Famous (2000) in these comedic scenes, but Chernus/Watts is most engaging when he breaks the fourth wall to address viewers directly with mini-lectures on musical technique and history. In one bravura sequence, framed as a single mobile shot, he breaks down the evolution of jazz as a kind of Zen journey from structured maximalism to free-form minimalism.
Fluk’s parting shot is a sweet coda featuring the real Brandes alongide her two screen doubles, Emde and Susanne Wolff, who plays her at 50 in a handful of time-jumping scenes. Now 68, Brandes has built a formidable career since her teenage breakthrough, from concert promoter to record producer, label boss, academic and music therapist. Brief, carefully framed archive clips of the real Jarrett playing with Miles Davis and other jazz legends add an extra layer of docu-drama meta-realism.
Director, screenwriter: Ido Fluk
Cast: Mala Emde, John Magaro, Michael Chernus, Alexander Scheer, Ulrich Tukur, Jördis Triebel, Susanne Wolff, Enno Trebs, Shirin Lilly Eissa, Leo Meier
Cinematography: Jens Harant
Editing: Anja Siemens
Music: Hubert Walkowski
Sound design: Frederik van de Moortel
Production design: Jutta Freyer
Producers: Sol Bondy, Fred Burle
Production company: One Two Films (Germany)
World sales: Bankside Films, London
Venue: Berlin Film Festival (Berlinale Special Gala)
In German, English
116 minutes
