‘They Shot the Piano Player’ Review: When Breezy Bossa Nova Met Deadly Fascism, Told ‘Chico & Rita’-Style
variety.comChris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Jazz and animation make for strong bedfellows in “They Shot the Piano Player,” a film from Spanish directors Fernando Treuba and Javier Mariscal that represents an intriguing hybrid in all sorts of ways.
It’s a love letter to the bossa nova movement that peaked in the 1960s, while at the same time it’s a sobering procedural that looks into the state murder of a musician that occurred as fascistic regimes rose to power in Latin America in the ’70s.
It’s a documentary, or at least more nonfiction than not, although it has a wholly concocted framing device. And above and beyond the movie’s somewhat incongruous mixture of gritty political realism and giddy music appreciation, yes, it’s completely hand-drawn.
So if you like movies that draw outside the lines, so to speak, then “They Shot the Piano Player” will be for you, even if it offers greater rewards on a scene-by-scene basis than it does with any strong payoff to a narrative buildup.
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