If there’s a pop musician of the last 60 years who deserves a great documentary, it’s Antonio Carlos Jobim. Some might bristle at my description of him as “pop.” In Brazil, where Jobim, one of the prime architects of bossa nova, is considered a national treasure, he’s simply thought of as a composer, placed on a pedestal along with classical Brazilian composers like Heitor Villa-Lobos. Jobim’s gorgeously complex chord structures — the aural equivalent of melty-colored Impressionist paintings — were arguably more jazz than pop.
Yet we’re long past the point where pop can’t include all that. Just consider Steely Dan’s “Aja,” an album of luminous jazz modalities that also happens to be the purest pop. Jobim, though he wrote in assorted forms, was quintessentially a composer of pop songs, and they had a tranquil forlorn incandescence all their own. There was something in the air...
Yet we’re long past the point where pop can’t include all that. Just consider Steely Dan’s “Aja,” an album of luminous jazz modalities that also happens to be the purest pop. Jobim, though he wrote in assorted forms, was quintessentially a composer of pop songs, and they had a tranquil forlorn incandescence all their own. There was something in the air...
- 10/13/2023
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
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