This movie is about the trumpeter Chet Baker, but it's not really a biopic or a documentary. I takes a while to unwrap who Chet was, and only does so with reflections and missing words.
They interview friends and family, and there's interview footage from 1987 toward the end of his life. It's all in high-contrast black and white, as if to emphasize the noir story of his life.
He was model-pretty, and music came easily to him. He became a star in the 1950s, playing with everybody notable.
But the jazz world in the fifties was rife with drugs, and Chet became hooked on heroin. He lost all his recording contracts, he lost all his teeth, he lost his family. When he unexpectedly re-emerged twenty years later, he looked haggard and broken, and had to relearn how to play with dentures. He talked slowly and hesitantly, as if the very act of speaking was difficult for him.
Sad story, great music. Artists are often given extra leeway when they go off the tracks, but in his case it appears most people considered him unreliable and incapable of entering into any kind of contract. His children despised him.
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