A poignant and tragic biography of the tortured jazz greats ★★★★☆

Bill Evans was an American boundary-breaking pianist who faced several personal tragedies and a serious drug problem. This new drama about him will draw you in with his hypnotic music.

Although they may be awards season favorites, musician biopics have become an increasingly reviled genre, with their hackneyed tropes — sudden creative discoveries, tortured narrative arcs of rise, fall, and rise. The big problem – as with films about any kind of artist, frankly – is: how do you really convey and explore their genius, ineffable though it may be?

This drama about tortured American jazz legend Bill Evans, played by Norwegian Anders Danielsen Lee (The Worst Man in the World), doesn’t quite solve that mystery, but it is atmospheric and beautifully shot and captures something powerful about the poisoned chalice of having an extraordinary creative talent.

Its Irish director, Grant Gee, is perhaps best known for his awkward 1997 feature film Meeting People Is Easy, which led to the band Radiohead’s retreat as they traveled the world following the smash success of their album Ok Computer. Everybody Digg Bill Evans is a more collected and composed work, but no less honest.

Evans was a pianist known for his pioneering influence on the form, in particular how he revolutionized the jazz trio alongside bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian. The film begins vividly, by transporting the viewer to a New York club in 1961, where the trio is performing: they cut between the musicians’ hands, lips, and eyes, the latter closed in a near-orgasmic reverie, and Pierce McGrail’s gorgeous black-and-white cinematography is deceptively deep and sensual, to match their playing.

But before the credits rolled, tragedy struck – Scott died in a car accident after falling asleep at the wheel. From here, the film becomes more straightforward and bleak, and less musical at all. Evans deals with the emotional fallout — or not, as the case may be — by canceling parties, falling back on heroin (via familiar close-ups of bubbly spoons) and sleeping on his brother Harry’s (Barry Ward) couch.