Everybody Digs Bill Evans

Sometimes an intermission is part of the music. That’s what American jazz pianist Bill Evans is told in a music biopic that, unconventionally, focuses on a period of his life when he stopped playing. It’s the first fiction feature of British filmmaker Grant Gee, renowned for music videos, and documentaries including 2007’s Joy Division and 2012’s moody Suffolk walking tour Patience (after Sebald).

Adapted from Owen Martell’s novel Intermission, in which Evans was written as if he were a ghost, the film was shot mostly in high-contrast black and white. In smoky bars and living rooms, Evans contends with the death of his trio’s bassist in a 1961 car accident days after they live-taped two of the most revered jazz records of all-time in New York. He decamps to Florida to shake a debilitating heroin habit and co-dependent chaos with partner Ellaine, only to land in the midst of a blue-collar family plagued by their own demons.

Norwegian actor and frequent Joachim Trier collaborator Anders Danielsen Lee brings a piercing, on-edge quality as a musician trapped between precision and collapse.

- Carmen Gray