The title of the movie may grab J. D. Salinger fans who know it as the title of one of Salinger’s better known short stories. They’ll be disappointed to learn that, while the movie too is a character sketch, it’s of the wholly unrelated Seymour Bernstein, a successful pianist turned piano teacher and composer in New York City. This Seymour gave up the limelight for contentment, and it’s that sentiment that strikes you in Ethan Hawke’s documentary.
Hawke includes conversation with others in the film, but it’s the footage of Bernstein, nearing 80, interacting with his younger students that is most captivating. These students are advanced, already capable of playing the right notes, but if you’ve wondered what things make the difference between a very competent musician and a truly excellent one, you get some idea here. Listening to one student chop away at the keys, Bernstein notices not the student’s hands but his shoulders. Placing his own hands on those shoulders, he has the student play it again, now more relaxed. It’s these kinds of small observations, but also his manner, that must make Berstein a fine teacher. He is the opposite of the teacher in Whiplash, inspiring with calmness, confidence in the student, and even a little humor. “Not all notes can be passionate,” he say after hearing one loud performance.
But Hawke is not a piano student, and it’s not the technical skills that drew him to his subject. Both acting (notably in the partly improvised films of Richard Linklater such as Boyhood, Tape, and the Before trilogy) and in interviews, he’s struck me as someone who is maybe thinking too much, who never seems relaxed. Maybe he envies Seymour Bernstein, who strikes me as someone who is thoughtful but not overthinking; he’s gained wisdom with age and simplified the things he prefers not to think about, like where to live. (So he’s been in the same apartment his entire adult life.) Whether you are a music fan or not, he may inspire.
IMDb link
viewed 3/26/15 7:30 pm [PFS screening] and posted 3/30/15
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