Review: Low Down

Low Down immerses viewers in the 1970s Hollywood jazz scene to focus on several years in the life of little-known but highly esteemed jazz pianist Joe Albany (John Hawkes). Considered to be one of the best by Charlie Parker, Lester Young, and many others, Joe battled with heroin addiction for most of his life before dying of upper respiratory failure and cardiac arrest at the age of 63.

His addiction looms large in his daughter Amy-Jo's (Elle Fanning) life. Told from her vantage point, Amy has a love "all out of proportion" for her father whom she describes as "some wayward melody that took the form of a man." Joe half-heartedly shields her from his drug use, but the thirteen-year-old Amy-Jo is wise enough to know what goes on behind the bathroom door or what Joe and his pals are up to after she goes to bed. It's no life for a child, living meal to meal in a rundown Hollywood motel, not knowing if her father might be taken away to jail for skipping yet another meeting with his parole officer.

The motel teems with other down-and-outers: addicts, artists, prostitutes, and others wallowing in their miserable lives with no consideration for others. One affecting scene finds Amy-Jo lingering in the hallway after walking out on an argument between Joe and his mother (Glenn Close). She sees a soldier knock on neighbour Colleen's (Taryn Manning) door. Colleen lets him in and then sets her young son outside so she can service the soldier. Amy-Jo keeps the little boy company, and they retreat to the hotel lobby to watch cartoons.

The film crawls from one depressing scene to the next, relying on observation and atmosphere. Certainly the recreation of the two-bit joints and dives where Joe performs and the barely habitable apartments is impeccable - the dankness is all too palpable. Cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt has no doubt seen John Huston's boxing drama Fat City, where the great Conrad Hall crafted visual poetry from the destitute and downtrodden surroundings. Blauvelt aims for something similar here, working with a strict palette of browns, tans, and soiled beiges. It's evocative but there are one too many instances where the scenes are too dimly lit, and seemingly not by accident.

Hawkes, Fanning, and Close are reliably excellent but the film is too downcast to appreciate the nuances in their portrayals. Director Jeff Preiss served as cinematographer for Bruce Weber's extraordinary Let's Get Lost, which was a beautiful and harrowing portrait of the similarly troubled jazz trumpeter and vocalist Chet Baker. Baker's self-destruction rivaled Joe's, and yet Weber's account is the more engaging and affecting. Preiss enforces little shape on the narrative and even less control on the pacing. There may have been an intention to mimic a freeform melody, but the result is a a slow march to boredom instead.

Low Down

Directed by: Jeff Preiss

Written by: Amy-Jo Albany, Topper Lilien; adapted from Amy-Jo Albany's memoir Low Down: Junk, Jazz, and Other Fairy Tales from Childhood

Starring: John Hawkes, Elle Fanning, Glenn Close, Tim Daly, Peter Dinklage, Flea, Burn Gorman, Lena Headey, Caleb Landry Jones, Taryn Manning