Miles Davis was one of the greatest musicians ever. He was also a nasty motherfucker. Stanley Nelson’s documentary Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool (which screens tonight and Friday afternoon at SIFF) pivots on these two immutable elements of the jazz trumpeter’s existence with a penetrating, analytical approach that doesn’t stint on emotion. It’s about as rewarding a dissection of a great artist and problematic human as one could hope for in under two hours.
Nelson enlists an elite cadre of Davis’s bandmates, wives and lovers, childhood friends, family members, promoters, music critics and historians, managers, label bosses, and Carlos Santana to provide key insights into this tormented genius. They’re generous with praise, but not afraid to call out the man’s faults, of which there were plenty. Birth of the Cool is bolstered by passages from Miles Davis’s autobiography—written with Quincy Troupe—that are voiced by the actor Carl Lumbly. The latter does such an amazing job, I thought it was actually Davis’s whispery rasp sandpapering the soundtrack.
