Doc Corner: 'American Symphony' is a biography misfire

By Glenn Charlie Dunks

Director Matthew Heineman has made a name for himself covering warzones in narrative film (A Private War) and most prominently in documentary (City of Ghosts, Cartel Land). I don’t blame him for stepping back just this once and making a movie about a charming musician and his rise to zeitgeist prominence. The film is American Symphony about Jon Batiste, a soft lob of a tribute that somewhat perversely is the film that could very well win him an Academy Award. Even documentarians can follow the same tried-and-tested path. I just wish I liked it more.

Batiste is 37 years old. American Symphony doesn’t say this stat outright as far as I recall, but it goes to great pains to make the audience very well aware that he is some sort of wunderkind. A Juilliard graduate who landed a big break as bandleader on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and then shocked people by winning four Grammy Awards including Album of the Year as well as an Oscar for the original score to Pixar animation Soul.

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