Review by C.J. Bunce
Most music aficianados have never heard of Francisco Tenório Cerqueira, Júnior, known as simply “Tenório Júnior,” but writer Fernando Trueba and artist Javier Mariscal are trying to fix that. From two angles they are trying to resurrect the music of the pianist who disappeared March 18, 1976, in Buenos Aires after giving a concert. Where did he go? Was he dropped out of an airplane by a government faction from a new dictatorship or tortured and shot, despite supposedly no connection to any political party? It’s the subject of They Shot the Piano Player, a graphic novel from publisher SelfMadeHero available now here at Amazon, and in an animated documentary featuring the voice of Jeff Goldblum, now streaming on Netflix.
The graphic novel is told from the perspective of a writer, a fictional character like a Rolling Stone reporter writing about Latin American popular music. When put on assignment to write a book, his interests home in on a piano player–Tenório Júnior– who contributed to some key albums in the 1950s–when the Bossa Nova was making a mark in United States popular culture. It was an era when Frank Sinatra and other big names soon were having hits in the genre on the charts and a Bossa Nova album featuring saxophonist Stan Getz and guitarist João Gilberto eclipsed The Beatles and included the now familiar “The Girl from Ipanema.”
The reporter mirrors the real-life account of Fernando Trueba, and at times both the graphic novel and the film are like reading Jon Krakauer pursuing the life of Christopher McCandless in Into the Wild or John Berendt trying to figure out why a murder happened in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.
The novelty of the graphic novel is that it features screen captures of the animation of the movie, which itself seems like an overlay of video clips adapted into animated form. The look is very much Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist, but with a noir edge. The bright lights and sounds of Carnival in Brazil are juxtaposed with the dark streets of decades past when South America was rampant with governments overthrown and tens of thousands of citizens vanishing overnight, much like the story of Tenório Júnior.
I read the graphic novel before watching the film on Netflix, and my main takeaway was how difficult it is to really tell the story of a musician without having access in that medium to the work itself. If the subject is a songwriter then you can still get the jist, but with a piano player you’re missing a key element, which, happily is why the film is a good medium and format for this story–I found the same concern reading biopic graphic novels of both David Bowie (reviewed here) and Jimi Hendrix (reviewed here). (Back in the 1970s magazines included cardboard and plastic LPs, which would be a nifty thing to bring back for things like this).
The animated format of the film is a plus, and the decision to take that direction can be found in the “liner notes” of the graphic novel. Scenes where one can only imagine how they played out in real life can be seen by an audience now via animated re-creations, especially the visuals of Tenório Júnior performing his music.
Jeff Goldblum seems involved mainly to draw attention to the project. The film features one of the longest opening introductions of production contributors you’ve probably ever seen, so you get an idea of the work that it took to bring this story to Netflix. But Goldblum’s voice is a good feature, especially because the writer of the story constantly offers his distress of what he learns about life in Brazil in the 1960s and 1970s at every turn (“that’s horrible” uttered over and over by Goldblum conveys the creator’s anguish for sure). At one point the writer tours a facility where Tenório Júnior might have been tortured, bumping his head on the same beam that many survivors later reported be smashed into as they were taken there in hoods.
As for Tenório Júnior’s piano playing–I don’t think it’s just the animated format of the film that may draw a comparison with Vince Guaraldi’s jazz piano stylings on A Charlie Brown Christmas. The music and his happy and snappy style of tickling the ivories makes it clear this was a musician with a future. But it was cut short.
What happened that night? We may never know. But you can find out more about the music and the musician in both the film and the graphic novel. They Shot the Piano Player, the graphic novel, is available now from publisher SelfMadeHero available now here at Amazon, and the animated documentary/rockumentary is now streaming on Netflix.
