Review by All Movie Guide
All Movie Guide
liked it.
"Jazz objectifies America," Wynton Marsalis says early in the first installment of
Ken Burns' sprawling look at the music, and by the time of its conclusion nearly 20 hours later, Burns has pretty effectively made his point. As he did previously with
The Civil War and
Baseball, Burns weaves together concrete historical facts about his subject with the overarching themes of American democracy, placing special emphasis on the issue of race. No expert on the music when he started the project, Burns' film combines the qualities of a thesis and a love letter -- his now-trademark combination of archival footage and photos, talking-head interviews, as well as music providing both informative and persuasive testimony of the enduring power of jazz. The lives of
Louis Armstrong and
Duke Ellington, characters whose far-reaching influence touched every artist chronicled in the film, give Burns a neat through-line, even while ultimately pointing to the project's limitations. Though
Jazz will doubtlessly reveal new facts even to veteran jazz fans, it's likely to be most satisfying to the relatively inexperienced. There's only so much Burns can cover even within this project's expansive time frame, and because of this, he places an emphasis on the giants of the field, exploring only major figures and movements, and concluding with a final episode that unfairly reduces the past 40 years to minor happenings, footnotes to his eulogies for Armstrong and Ellington. Burns' passion for facts and issues, and the insightful, equally passionate commentary of Marsalis and critic Gary Giddins makes for a stirring tribute to the form -- informative enough to turn any newcomer onto the music and stirring enough to light a fire under heard-it-all experts. ~ Keith Phipps, All Movie Guide