Charlie Haden: Rambling Boy (Reto Caduff, 2009): Switzerland

Reviewed by Kazimir Berman. Viewed at the Lobero Theater part of the Santa Barbara Film Festival.

Before I saw Charlie Haden: Rambling Boy I liked Jazz. After, when I hear it , I want to explore  its roots, enjoy its complexity and revere its many unique and talented characters. It is a film about Charlie Haden, but it a much larger sense it is about Jazz and about the musicians who make the music possible.

The Movie begins by illustrating Charlie Haden’s country background; the folk roots which influenced his Jazz playing. As a child Mr. Haden played in a band with his family, performing on the radio on weekends. Moving from Springfield Ohio to Chicago, Charlie was liberated into the freewheeling city lifestyle of swing sex, drugs, booze and of course Jazz. In Chicago and later Los Angeles he is influced by the likes of greats like Charlie Parker, Billy Holiday, Don Bagly, even classical composers such as Sergey Rachminonov.

The Film opens with driving through the farmlands of rural Northwestern United States in black and white, this grainy textured old age film gives this documentary a feeling of authenticity. Opening the film this way I felt that I was being welcomed into someone’s warm humble home, fresh cookies baking in the oven. The movie switches between digital and real film which for me, makes many documentaries too dichotomous in structure.

Although it seemed to go on for a long time, becoming slow to watch for someone who is younger than say 50, I still enjoyed learning about one of Jazz’s great basists and the Music which influenced him. Something that I liked during the movie was when they explain bass as the Rhythm, the harmony and body of the music which defines the possibilities of where music can be and where it can go. The vibrations he said, are part of your body, a mental and physical phenomenon. “No Matter how far out of how foundational, it is always swinging, and that is Jazz”. Also, Jazz, he said “is about listening to yourself, honesty and clarity”.