Without question, my favorite piece of film-based writing from the last 12 months is Chris Person's AfterMath essay "They Want You To Forget What A Film Looks Like". In this piece, Person explores how recent 4K transfers of movies like True Lies and The Abyss reflect terrible modern practices of taking classic movies and making them look unrecognizable. In these video "upgrades", Person notes that “skin looks sterile and waxy with too much film grain removed. Everything looks like it has raytracing on." He subsequently notes that this process is a deeply misguided process to make older movies visually relevant to new audiences. Begone film grain, varied types of lighting, and other “imperfections” imbue motion pictures their visual personalities.
Now classic features look like Netflix-approved slop! As the title indicates, modern studios and AI algorithms (which help mightily execute these transfers) are all about ensuring a new crop of audiences are conditioned to think this is what movies always looked like. Person pinpoints these problems as emanating from restoring house Park Road Post and the precedent set by their work on They Shall Not Grow Old. That 2018 Peter Jackson documentary "upgraded" World War I footage to make it colorized, 3D, and functioning in a higher frame rate. A person's striking prose gets to the heart of the problem with so radically overhauling archival footage like this. Within Grow Old, he observes that "soldiers are motion interpolated in a melting, shambolic manner. The digital noise reduction is inconsistent..."
His essay ominously, but accurately, concludes by noting that "It’s not simply enough for much of digital cinema to look crystal clear and lifeless; the past should be denoised, grain managed and cleaned to conform to that standard. It is expedient and profitable if people don’t remember what film is supposed to look like." It’s a fantastic read crystallizing problems I’ve had with modern digital transfers for years…but I never could’ve eloquently explained them this well! It’s a must-read about a dire problem we should all take seriously as film fans.
Pearson’s words rattled in my brain watching Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat utilize archival footage. Writer/director Johan Grimonprez uses a plethora of different media sources to provide visual accompaniment to a saga about U.S. and Belgian government-sanctioned activities connected to the murder of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba. Grimonprez constantly cuts to things like vintage scratchy interviews of Malcolm X, hastily captured footage of Lumumba walking down the street, or yellow-tinged images of Louis Armstrong exiting a plane (among many other sights).
The imperfections of these videos from decades ago are preserved for Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat. This includes several segments (many originating as portions of TV broadcasts) coated in a blue hue. These visual variations benefit the movie on several fronts. For one thing, frequently shifting between color schemes (including from monochromatic images to fully colorized videos) or levels of video quality quietly reinforces how many perspectives are involved in this saga. There are endless different points of view in the story of Lumumba that stretch from Cuba to Russia to the Congo. The volatile kinds of images flooding the screen visually mirror a story stretching across the globe.
This quality also hammers home that we’re watching something rooted in Cold War paranoia. They Shall Not Grow Old centered on making images from the 1910s “relevant” to modern moviegoers. Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat, meanwhile, confidently believes its material is so compelling it can flourish while leaning into images constantly reminding you of their wear and tear. Grimonprez’s collection of archival footage is here to reflect a mood, not catering to me specifically.
Mixing together a slew of propulsive jazz tracks with occasionally heightened images like floating hats or a spinning bedframe, meanwhile, infuses a temporarily surrealistic quality to the Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat that’s incredibly appropriate. Hearing anecdotes of CIA officials nonchalantly discussing murdering folks Fidel Castro or Lumumba is a mind-boggling experience. The images on-screen can’t be routine, they have to match the ludicrousness and cacophony of reality.
These deeply specific visual impulses service recounting historical events that will leave any reasonable viewer with their fits clenched, blood pressure raised, and jaw agape. Just look at what follows footage of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's United Nations speech concerning the necessity for all countries (including his) to engage in nuclear disarmament. Right away, Grimonprez cuts to a news headline revealing that stock market numbers declined substantially afterward. American leaders, already viewing anything related to Russia as toxic, were heightened. Capitalism and the pockets of the bourgeoisie were threatened, thus setting into motion countless historical events resulting in international bloodshed.
Grimonprez and editor Rik Chaubet show a knack for perfect timing in this movie's image. The power of this deeply specific chronology is easier to absorb since Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat largely eschews talking head interviews and narration. There isn’t a voice suddenly intruding on the images to say things like “This was important”. The viewer can fully grasp the significance of these visual details. An especially striking and tragically relevant example of this comes as Coup d'Etat bleakly shines a light on the plundering of resources that informed Belgian and American interest in the Congo. Vintage footage of a disabled Congolese native (missing one arm after toiling away in the mines for colonizers) lighting a cigarette for his white bosses. Exploitation and dismissal of Congolese humanity are glaringly apparent in this sickening footage.
What companies profit from this barbarism? Well, Grimonprez and Chaubet reveal that by cutting from these old images into a sleek modern commercial for a hideous-looking Tesla automobile. We don’t need narration or extra visual cues to understand what Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat is saying. White affluence is built on oppression and colonialism.
It’s not the only moment in Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat that leaves you gasping and shuddering. A late sequence consisting of just audio from an interview with a South African soldier tasked with slaughtering Congolese natives (accompanied only by on-screen text transcribing his words) is a sickening glimpse into humanity's nadir. The man’s blasé attitude about slaughtering women and children (“Well, they’re cannibals, ya know, they’re not normal people” he hideously says to justify the inexcusable) reminded me of the testimony from the former SS officer secretly filmed for Shoah. In both cases, cinema bears witness to a man verbalizing incomprehensible crimes against humanity.
The sparseness of this segment lets every word of this man’s anecdotes hit the viewer like a ton of bricks. It’s one of the most stripped-down stretches of Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat. Otherwise, this production audaciously leaps across numerous historical perspectives and events while breezing from one music cue to the next. That’s the other magnificent part of this production, the soundtrack. As if the transgressive filmmaking choices weren’t enough to make Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat a must-see, audiences are also immersed in works from some of the greatest musicians of all time. John Coltrane, Nina Simone, Ornette Coleman, and so many others get to flex their creative muscles within this feature’s needle drops.
Audio accompaniments to the documentaries’ various images also manifest in readings of sections from assorted memoirs and books, An especially notable example of this motif is In Koli Jean Bofane reading aloud passages from his text Congo Inc. A Congolese native, Bofane's words are richly composed while his original testimony for Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat radiates a captivating lived-in aura. Grimonprez’s gaze throughout this documentary focuses on historical attestations confirming the complicity of powerful Western governments in imperialism and human rights violations. Within Bofane’s segments, viewers vividly see and feel the impact of these egregious actions. A late scene where he recounts how Congo is still, to this day, plagued by cycles of violence and oppression especially leaves one devastated.
The emotional power of such sequences speaks tremendously to how powerfully Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat’s boldest ambitions pays off. This documentary's expansive scope covers everything from Dizzy Gillespie's presidential campaign to Nikita Khrushchev banging his shoe on a desk at the UN general assembly to files confirming the CIA wanted to subdue Castro via an exploding cigar, and so much more. Like so many jazz songs, it’s all over the place yet coalesces into a fantastic idiosyncratic whole. The fierce creative instincts of Grimonprez and company ensure Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat’s resonates so vigorously…and just think! This movie didn’t need to use AI programs to upgrade archival footage into smoothed-over eyesores! Chris Person would be proud! Committing to presenting archival footage as it was uncovered is just one of the endless ways Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat’s excels.