“Low Down” is a very good jazz movie and a very good heroin movie, if
indeed there’s much practical difference between the two modes—and
perhaps there isn’t. From “The Man with the Golden Arm” through “Bird”
and “Mo Better Blues,” jazz has often been portrayed as a lifestyle
that’s bound up in addiction, to heroin, gambling, sex, cocaine,
alcohol, or some mix. When you watch films about the music and the
people who create and perform it, you may start to wonder if jazz itself
is a kind of addictive pursuit: an activity that’s also a metaphor.
There hasn’t been much of a commercial percentage in playing jazz for
several decades, at least not compared to hip-hop, rock, country or
bubblegum pop (which are their own kinds of crap shoots, of course). Even
in the 1950s—when jazz began exploring more theoretical aspects, and
became more a listenable art than a danceable entertainment, yet still
spawned commercial hits like Miles Davis’s “Kind of Blue” and become a
signifier of urban sophistication (see Hefner, Hugh)—it filled what
seemed, in comparison to other pop forms, a niche market. So why play
it? For art’s sake. For pleasure. And for the rush.
It
certainly seems as though Joe Albany (John Hawkes), the real-life
pianist and heroin addict at the center of “Low Down,” plays jazz and
shoots dope for all those reasons; well, those reasons, and the fact that
he’s a junkie living among other junkies, which isn’t a situation that
lends itself to sobriety. Directed by cinematographer Jeff Preiss, a
jazz fan who shot the 1990 Chet Baker documentary “Let’s Get Lost,” the
film is based on a memoir by Joe’s daughter Amy (Elle Fanning), and it
unfolds mostly through her eyes. The movie’s carefully maintained
point-of-view explains why this objectively bleak story feels so warm
and gentle. Amy adores her father and respects his artistry. Because
she’s lived her whole life in his chaotic world—they share a small
apartment in downtown Los Angeles, in a building full of prostitutes,
junkies, and other marginal characters; “I can’t keep myself straight here,” Joe confesses in a moment of clarity—she
doesn’t see her situation as dire. It’s just her situation, and as long
as dad’s in it, she’s fine. I like to think that’s why Priess shot the
movie in soft, grainy 16mm, favoring brown and russet and gold and
creamy-white: because we’re seeing this world as Amy sees it, through
hopeful and loving eyes.
There’s plenty to love about Joe,
but Amy’s hope is misplaced, and in time she’ll figure this out. I’ve
described “Low Down” as a jazz movie and an addiction movie, but both
movies are folded into a coming-of-age story about a young woman who’s
becoming a grownup, and realizing that her father is an adult, too, but
one whose lifestyle (as an artist as well as a junkie) gives him license
not to really grow up, at least not in the way that more “square”
parents are forced to.
Joe lives from gig to gig and blows a
lot of the money he makes on dope. Like many addicts with children, he
genuinely loves his daughter, but expresses that love in the form of
conversations and fleeting, spontaneous adventures rather than through
the mundane day-to-day grunt work of parenting. (He’s the kind of guy
who can make it seem as though he’s listening to you, even though his
mind is elsewhere.) Amy and Joe don’t go out much as a father and
daughter, and we rarely see them talking about her schoolwork, or her
personal development, or about the future. He does bring her to live
gigs and invites other musicians over to the apartment to jam while she
listens, but that’s not the same thing as truly fathering a child.
Preiss lets the harsh reality of Joe’s neglect enter the film in subtle
ways, as when Amy’s grandmother, Gram (Glenn Close), has Amy over for
dinner and exclaims, “Look at you, girl, you eat like a linebacker—I
love it!” In another scene, a hungover Joe wakes Amy up and tells her to
hurry to school, and she groans, “It’s the weekend.” A smile creeps
across Joe’s face as he realizes she’s right. “It is, isn’t it?” he says
quietly. “That’s great news.”
Amy’s adoration of Joe is
rooted in genuine love of his art. There’s a wonderful moment where we
see Amy finish listening to a tune
on vinyl, then lift the needle up and place it at the start of the cut
to listen to it again. The rapt expression on Fanning’s face during
live musical performances is just exactly right (Hawkes, a guitarist,
fakes Albany’s acrobatic finger-work brilliantly, and Preiss rewards his
diligence by showing us his hands in close-up). We get the impression
that Amy was oblivious to Joe’s cycles of addiction for most of her
young life. Her dad seems functional most of the time, and charming,
even dashing—Hawkes moves his slender frame with a dancer’s grace, and
holds his cigarette with with jaunty elegance—then he’ll go on a binge
and reveal self-pitying, abrasive, neglectful sides. He’ll hurt her
terribly, breaking her heart and making her cry, and then he’ll smile at
her in a certain way, or crack just the right joke, and she’ll forgive
him. You’d call Amy an enabler if she were mature enough to have any say
in her life, but she’s not. She’s tall and beautiful and on the verge
of adulthood, but she’s just a kid. She’s starting to see through Joe
now, though, and it’s painful.
Much of her dawning awareness
creeps in via encounters with other characters. Gram thinks her boy Joe
hung the moon, comes to his aid when he’s at his lowest, and sometimes
behaves more like a starstruck groupie than a parent. “They’re all
touched by something wonderful,” she says of jazz heroes, her eyes
flashing. “They’re touched by God.” Alain (Peter Dinklage), a sweet and
charismatic artist neighbor, squats in an abandoned apartment in the
building, and does a much better job of hiding his addiction than Joe
does, but not well enough to hide it from Amy. Joe’s best friend Hobbs
(Flea, a ringer for middle-aged Chet Baker) seems like a rock, but he’s a
junkie, too, and he romanticizes the connection between drugs and jazz
by suggesting that God takes junkie musicians young “because they’re so
good.” Amy’s alcoholic mother, Sheila (Lena Headey of “Game of
Thrones”), at times seems jealous of her daughter, and verbally cuts her
down as one might a romantic rival.
“Low Down” drives home the idea that whatever you experienced as a kid
is your “normal,” even when you grow up seeing things that children
shouldn’t see, and enduring things they shouldn’t have to endure. One of
the film’s most quietly harrowing scenes, Amy sees a man knock on a
neighbor woman’s door, then keeps watching as the woman opens it, lets
the man in, and tells her son to wait out in the hall. A subsequent shot
of Amy and the boy watching TV in the building’s lobby captures the
instant affinity that many children of addicts feel. Fanning’s
performance in this mostly reactive role could scarcely be improved; we
understand every tremor of feeling in Amy just from watching her move
and listen and have her heart broken. Preiss’ movie does a consistently
excellent job of explaining the lure of jazz, and the psychology of
addicts, their enablers and their children without explaining anything.
We just watch and listen and understand.
Source:: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/low-down-2014
