Change Your Image
stephen-b-wong
Reviews
Embracing Voices: The Woman Behind the Music of Jane Bunnett (2012)
in the embrace of
At NXNE 2012: I had a chance to see the world premier of "Embracing Voices", the jazz music documentary film of Jane Bunnett and her award- winning music, directed by Elisa Paloschi. It's a rare and brave work, a gem of a stormy calm that completely dazzles as the creative crystallization comes through to give face to the collaborative struggle not only with the artist's inspiration but also with fellow artists and musicians and their craft.
The film's achievement is what a francophone might call a "manifestation", a revelation of forces and energies that overcome their margins and edges. "Embracing" (en brazos de...) in the film's title, as well as in Bunnett's Juno award winning album's title, would clearly also re-enact a retelling of Homer's Odyssey, in which Menelaus tells of how he embraced and held tightly onto the sea-god Proteus sleeping among a colony of seals on the beach even as the god transformed into a lion, a serpent, a leopard, a pig, even a tree, until some secrets were revealed. I believe this is what Paloschi accomplishes, not only in allegory of the film medium's grabbing a hold of the frame and the tight shots, but also in bestowing on the unsuspecting film-goer story arcs that become deeply personal and inspiring and ultimately transforming.
And there is a secret here somewhere. For even if we forget somehow that the film is about some jazz musician's life and time, we come away almost knowing, perhaps in fact directly comprehending, how it is in that little while to be Larry and Jane, and why.