Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat
Louis Armstrong, Nina Simone, Dizzy Gillespie and others populate a challenging documentary that blends jazz, history and controversy.
Image courtesy of Modern Films.
This extraordinary film is the work of the Belgian artist Johan Grimonprez who was born in 1962. As a filmmaker he has mainly devoted himself to short pieces but in 2016 he made a feature documentary about international arms trading, The Shadow World, and prior to that he had offered a mid-length work about plane hijackings, Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, which was described as experimental and the 2009 feature Double Take. The latter can now be regarded as a precursor of Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat in that it was a work about the 1960s concerned with the arms race which was a feature of the Cold War and was presented in a most novel way. In that film regardless of the documentary aspects at its heart, Grimonprez chose to blend in enacted footage that portrayed Alfred Hitchcock working on his film The Birds and encountering a man who claimed to be his older self. This new work is again a documentary set largely in the early 1960s and incorporates a concept that is as original and almost as odd as that of using Hitchcock in Double Take.
The title, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, is a pointer to what Grimonprez is offering us. His film is concerned with the Belgian Congo, its bid for independence that led to it becoming a Democratic Republic in 1960 and the international intrigue that followed leading to the assassination of the country’s leader, the prime minister Patrice Lumumba on the 17th January 1961. The film’s survey of these complex events is presented essentially through archive material put together not always in chronological order but in a manner that justifies categorising it as an essay film although it is one that eschews the use of a commentator with an authorial voice. We do, however, get spoken extracts from no less than three books, these being works by Andrée Blouin, In Kali Jean Borane and Conor Cruise O’Brien. Even so what is essentially a political film makes substantial use of jazz music. It is not only heard throughout but involves too the inclusion of numerous shots of great jazz musicians either performing or seen talking in newsreel or TV clips.
If the idea of featuring this music in a film about political matters sounds bizarre, it has to be said that, in contrast to using Hitchcock in Double Take, there is a genuine direct connection here. In a film that goes back as far as 1955 and is on occasion ready to include footage from as late as 1965, the aim is to offer a broad view of power politics of the decade which saw the western alliance reluctant to lessen their grip and therefore hostile to countries seeking independence if that might become a threat. The Congo is the central example here with America anxious to sustain its position as the prime receiver of uranium from Katanga so crucial to the USA's atomic power. Nevertheless, this is but part of a wider picture (Lumumba’s interest in creating a United States of Africa added to America's concerns about him) and Grimoprez accordingly widens his focus and includes archive footage featuring the likes of Castro, Nasser and Nkrumah. Even more significant is what we see of Russia’s Nikita Khrushchev putting forward resolutions in the UN against colonialism and of Malcolm X whose support for Patrice Lumumba leads to this film reflecting too the racial suppressions in America.
Ironically (and this is where jazz music plays a part in the politics of this period) the USA deliberately made use of such artists as Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie by arranging for them to tour abroad and, particularly relevant here, to visit the Congo. They were seen as ambassadors whose music appealed to the masses and encouraged a positive view of America at a time when underhand moves needed to be covered up not least as regards President Eisenhower’s stance towards Patrice Lumumba. Furthermore, although some musicians were unaware of how they were being used as a front, others were politically involved in a conscious way acting in opposition: those such as the singers Abbey Lincoln and Miriam Makeba and the drummer Max Roach were activists and offered material that asserted their views (the film twice features Lincoln performing items from the suite ‘We Insist! Freedom Now’).
But, despite these valid links, the jazz element in this film is so emphasised that it becomes a distraction. That's not a view shared by everyone (the film has won no less than eight awards) but its presence contributes mightily to the length of Grimonprez's film which runs for two and a half hours. Each piece of music featured is meticulously named and if the jazz had been a respite at intervals from the politics it might have been welcome. But, regardless of the quality of the artists (Nina Simone, Duke Ellington, Ornette Colman and Miles Davis are amongst those featured), the music heard here is either background or present in intercut footage alongside the politics. Experts on the history of this period will not only know better than I how fair this didactic film is (the actions of the CIA and the UN are bitterly criticised throughout and probably validly so) but may be able to take in all the history that is being put before us. Some critics have found the jazz element enlivening but, if one is often struggling to understand all the political detail and the roles of the film’s vast array of major figures, one has no time to appreciate the music as such.
Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat never plays down and it is always welcome to find a film aimed at an intelligent audience. In that respect I was reminded of Raoul Peck’s superb film about James Baldwin, I Am Not Your Negro (2016). That work demanded concentration but was never difficult. Given that Peck also made two films about Lumumba (a drama of that title in 2000 and an earlier documentary in 1991), I rather think that had I been able to see them they would have appealed to me far more than this piece. Of course, the story that unfolds in Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat has inherent importance and power but even so sitting through 150 minutes of this film felt like a task. Grimonprez is known as a multimedia artist and that may have encouraged him to intermingle politics and music to the extent that he does here, but I for one would have gained much more had there been two distinct works, a straightforward documentary about Lumumba and his fate and a jazz film featuring the musicians and their music.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Dir Johan Grimonprez, Pro Daan Milius and Rémi Grellety, Screenplay Johan Grimonprez, Ph Jonathan Wannyn, Ed Rik Chaubet.
Onomatopee Films/Warboys Films/Zap-O-Matik/BALDR Film-Modern Films.
150 mins. Belgium/France/Netherlands 2024. US Rel: 1 November 2024. UK Rel: 15 November 2024. No Cert.
