Michel Petrucciani - Life Against Time

That Michel Petrucciani was an extraordinary person became clear at birth. For example, the baby, who suffered from brittle bone disease, had nearly every bone in his body broken upon entering life. The disease later prevented Petrucciani from growing taller than six feet. But as a jazz pianist, the little man was a big one. He gave his first professional concert at the age of 13, and by the time of his death he had sold well over 1.5 million albums and always played to sold-out crowds at hundreds of concerts around the world. Filmmaker Michael Radford (1984's The Postman) has drawn on a wealth of archival footage and interviews to create a fascinating portrait of Petrucciani the exceptional artist and the man that is far more than an adulatory biography of the musician.

Michel Petrucciani - Life Against Time traces the musician's childhood, life and work, showing how Petrucciani discovered his passion for music, for jazz, how he indulged his love for women and how his insatiable hunger for life, for change, for music and drugs eventually destroyed him. Companions, friends, family all have their say. What his ex-wife or his son have to say about Petrucciani is at least as exciting as the statements of Roger Willemsen, who had a long friendship with Petrucciani. Radford has gathered a total of 35 people in front of his camera, all of whom talk passionately about the musician, but who are also not sparing in their criticism. As a result, the interviews, like the entire film, seem refreshingly honest and the enthusiasm, the love, shown to Petrucciani all the more understandable.

But what this documentary primarily thrives on is the vast amount of archival footage, which offers a great insight into the jazz legend's skills, his working methods, but also his thinking and worldview. When Petrucciani tells us, for instance, that he himself was quickly aware that he was not a normal person and that he therefore never tried to be normal and fit in, it does explain a lot of what made this man tick.

Even though Michel Petrucciani already died in 1999 at the age of just 36, as a person and as an artist he has hardly lost any of the fascination he exuded throughout his life. And that's exactly what makes Michel Petrucciani - Life Against Time so interesting, exciting and worth seeing - even if you, like the author of these lines, are not at all interested in jazz. Worth seeing

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp