They Shot the Piano Player: Animated Docudrama of Late Samba Star Paints Grim Argentine History

By Karen Gordon

Rating: A-minus

They Shot the Piano Player could have been a documentary.  The core story it tells is true, that being the fate/murder of Tenório Cerqueira Junior, an admired innovative Brazilian piano player who became one of the “disappeared” in Argentina’s “dirty war.”

But Oscar winning Spanish filmmaker Fernando Trueba (Belle Èpoch) has taken a different route: The music-loving director of the film Calle 12, who is also a multi Grammy winning producer, has made a hybrid film in both style and format. It’s a movie that plays like a feature film, with documentary elements wrapped around a fictional lead character.

And in collaboration with his co-director, visual artist Javier Mariscal, it’s an even further mash-up of reality and fiction.

To wit: they’ve made it an animated movie.

The result is a rich, absorbing and visually exuberant film, that captures many things at the same time: it’s Tenório’s story, what happened to him in Argentina as a wave of authoritarianism swept through South America. It’s a memoir, but it’s also the story of a rich musical era, through the words of some of its leading musicians.  

The film is built around a fictional New York based  journalist Jeff Harris, voiced by Jeff Goldblum. Harris has just had an article on 50 years of Bossa Nova published in the New Yorker, which leads to him being commissioned to expand the article into a book.

Preparing to go to Brazil to do interviews for the book, Harris keeps coming across references to a much admired pianist named Tenório, Jr. It’s clear he was a leading musician, considered one of the stars of the Samba Jazz/Bossa Nova trend in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

But oddly, the references to the musician end abruptly in 1976, without an explanation. And now, 30 years later, and after 30 more years of history, this great musician has vanished.

Harris heads down to Rio de Janeiro to do in-person interviews and more research for his Bossa Nova book. In each interview, Tenório’s name  comes up time and again, with the musicians clearly devastated by his disappearance. He may have gone, but it’s clear that his story still haunts the people he knew and worked with. 

Who was Tenório and what happened to him? This becomes a nagging question and then an obsession for Harris.  

What he learns is that in March of 1976, 35-year-old Tenório was on a tour as part of the band of the famed musician and poet Vinicius de Moraes.  

They were in Buenos Aires for a few shows. Argentina was a dangerous place at that point, on the verge of sweeping political change. One night around 3 a.m., after a gig, Tenório went out to get cigarettes and a sandwich, and never came back.  

The band, obviously devastated and alarmed,  searched for a few days, and then, worried about their own safety, left for home in Rio hoping that their friend would show up. He never did. Their timing was significant. Less than a week later, the government was toppled in a coup. 

In the real world, the true story of what happened to Tenório only came to light in 2013 when someone who was present confessed. 

In the film, Harris ultimately follows a trail, through interviews and inquiries, as the movie unfolds like a detective story. Ultimately, Harris is able to retrace the last steps and the last few days of the unfortunate musician’s life. 

Tenório's life, career and fate are at the center of the film.  That means telling the story of the dark days of Argentina, and of Operation Condor, the CIA-backed series of coups throughout South America. And yet, the film is not a polemic.  

By creating the fictional journalist whose first love is the music, and by making this about his inquiry and his journey, we’re brought along on an exploration about these people, about this time and place.   

The movie gives us enough political context to understand what was going on and what life felt like back then. But it’s really about the life of Tenório, who he was, his complicated personal life, how people felt about him, and the effects of the years of not knowing what happened.  

What we’re left with is something very human. It’s the story of a loose community of people, artists who lived through a vibrant time, a difficult, heartbreaking time, all connected through the loss of someone they all knew and loved.

But, most importantly, what the film really accomplishes, is bringing back to life Tenório Cerqueira Junior, a terrifically talented musician whose career was ended abruptly. 

They’ve restored his work and his legacy.  It's no small thing.

They Shot the Piano Player. Directed by Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal, starring Jeff Goldblum. In theatres, Friday, March 15.