‘Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat’ is an electrifying documentary of music, history and politics
Johan Grimonprez’s film about the 1961 coup against Congo’s Patrice Lumumba is one of the most exhilarating and inventive nonfiction pictures of the year
Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, the new documentary from the Belgian filmmaker Johan Grimonprez, is about the January 1961 assassination of Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba and its aftermath.
But it’s really about a great deal more than that: the protest led by singer Abbey Lincoln and her then-husband, drummer Max Roach, to the U.N. Security Council a few months later and the subsequent political involvement of various legendary musicians like Louis Armstrong, John Coltrane, and Nina Simone, some of whom were effectively used as pawns by the U.S. government.
Then, the film zooms out even further, into that particular chapter of Cold War history, as African nations were gaining independence and joining the United Nations, while the CIA was intervening, in Congo and elsewhere. Overall, it’s a rampage through the early 1960s, including quite a few things that should bring great shame to those responsible.
We see Nikita Khrushchev's “We will bury you” speech, with the film adopting the revisionist interpretation that he actually meant to say “I love you.”
Max Roach was already the subject of his own documentary last year, Max Roach: The Drum Also Waltzes, which was combined from rival projects by documentarians Ben Shapiro (no, not that one) and Sam Pollard.
From this description, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat may sound like a university lecture, but it’s anything but that. The style recalls the Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude, and the way he used different media forms to tell his country’s history in the middle section of 2022’s Bad Luck Banging, Or: Loony Porn.
Indeed, it’s far from a standard narrative. The storytelling comes alive, through ever-present jazz music, newsreel footage, and a narration that goes backward and forward through time. It’s all exhilarating, with a two-and-a-half hour running time that it speeds through.
Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat was a Sundance debut back in January. It has opened in New York, with more cities to come, although I’m unaware of any streaming release plans. But see this film when you can, as it’s one of the very best documentaries of the year.