Everybody Digs Bill Evans

In July 1961, jazz pianist and composer Bill Evans was confronted by a tragedy, when bassist Scott LaFaro died in a car accident. The death impacted Evans’s own ability to play music and contributed to his heroin addiction worsening. Without the support of his brother Harry’s family as well as a period of forced rest at his parent’s home in Florida, it is questionable whether Evans would have ever been able to return to playing.

For a biopic of a musician, this film, outside of the opening credits, includes fairly little music. Evans’ best-known song, Waltz for Debby, is beautifully placed in its tender context. Apart from that, we experience an interval, something that also belongs to music.

Grant Gee’s film, which received the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival, presents us with flashes of the inevitable: more people die, as does, in the end, Evans himself. From the black-and-white focus of the tale and a future distorted by colours is born a broken melody, which is presented harmoniously as the protagonist (played by Anders Danielsen Lie) marches towards his next period of creativity.

After the movie, one can tune into Yle Areena to take in a living room concert filmed in Lauttasaari in Helsinki in 1970, in which Evans and his trio perform three songs in the course of an interview.

Johanna Siik