In the opening refrain of Ido Fluk’s Köln 75, music journalist Michael Watts (Michael Chernus) addresses the audience and compares Keith Jarrett’s seminal jazz concert of the film’s title to the Sistine Chapel. Given the concert spawned a recording that became the bestselling solo jazz album of all time, it’s perhaps not an unfair comparison. However, this film is not, Watts explains, about the Sistine Chapel, or Michelangelo, but the scaffolding that allowed it to be built. This is – it is implied – not a film about the record, or Keith Jarrett. It’s about Vera Brandes, the 18-year-old whirlwind who made the concert happen. The problem is that it’s hard to make a film about the scaffolding around the Sistine Chapel without it becoming, at least somewhat, about the Sistine Chapel.
That’s not to say that Fluk’s film, which he has written and directed, doesn’t centre Brandes – it absolutely does. It begins at her 50th birthday party before she (played by Susanne Wolff) glances knowingly at the camera and a needle scratch sees us transported back in the 1970s. These are freer, simpler times, where a precocious teenage Vera (Mala Emde) can stumble into arranging a tour of Germany for saxophonist Ronnie Scott. She’s a force of nature, a concert booker at night and falling asleep in class during the day. During a visit to Berlin for a jazz festival, she sees Jarrett (John Magaro) perform his solo piano improvisation and is spellbound, insisting on bringing him to her home city.
The story is one that walks to a familiar rhythm, hitting familiar beats as obstacles are dropped in her path; her stern father (Ulrich Tukur) despairs at her wayward lifestyle and she pulls things together through sheer indomitable willpower. Fluk litters this with various recognisable devices – from the needle scratch to several, at times lengthy, monologues to camera. Even where they can feel contrived, they mostly work, and Jens Harant’s photography and Jutta Freyer’s production design cohere beautifully. Emde, in particular, makes all of this eminently watchable, winningly embodying Brandes’ magnetism. She convinces everyone – friends, strangers, the audience, even prominent musicians who have played for Miles Davis – to throw their weight behind her endeavour. It’s absorbing and fun, if cinematically unremarkable.
Where this effect is diluted is where Fluk tries to thread into this story more of a paean to Jarrett and his artistry. John Magaro is quietly compelling as the pianist, but the fluctuations in pace and tone can feel abrupt and never coalesce into the kind of meaning the screenplay keeps taking swings for. The film doesn’t try to capture the spirit of what remains a radical artistic practice, nor does it manage to strike a truly impactful chord.
As a punchy portrait of a young woman railing against a dreary future, Köln 75 is diverting and entertaining. As a portrait of a singular artist who pushed at the boundaries of his form, it’s somewhat less accomplished. In blending the two it ends up caught in a middle ground that seems unsure who the film is really for.
