“Köln 75” portrays the music promoter Vera Brandes, who organised Keith Jarrett's famous “Köln Concert” in 1975, with great enthusiasm and humour.
Biopics are not free jazz, rather the opposite. Well-known figures in standardised image sequences, the same syncopated conflicts and narrative patterns – no wonder Keith Jarrett rejected the film “Köln 75”. But it's not entirely true that he doesn't like his famous “Köln Concert”, which is the subject of the film (“all the recordings should be scrapped”). The now 79-year-old artist is generally unhappy about the legendary status of the “best-selling solo jazz record in history”. Like no other in jazz, Keith Jarrett stands for the power of music as a unique experience, irreproducible and therefore unsaleable.Passion and Profession
Perhaps the most anticipated film of the Berlinale – read: out of competition – is not about him at all, but about the 18-year-old concert promoter Vera Brandes, who got the “Köln Concert” rolling back in 1975. Mala Emde (Und morgen die ganze Welt, Germany 2020) plays her with all the conviction that the job requires. Jarrett's first concert in Berlin rocks her world. You have to believe that in the face of a 1970s German musical landscape in which jazz is considered “museum music” and is in danger of being crushed between rock and classical music. Vera orders Jarrett to Cologne. She started in the business at the age of 16, she is the “it girl” of the Cologne scene, the “jazz bunny” for the tabloid press. A nightmare for her dentist father, played by Ulrich Tukur, who doesn't regard jazz as a profession at all.Wrong Grand Piano and Back Pain
The difficulties of the concert have long been legendary in their own right. Instead of the requested Bösendorfer Imperial concert grand piano, the Cologne Opera only offers a modest grand piano for rehearsals, on which the keys and pedals are jammed. While two piano tuners shake their heads and set about repairing the piano, Vera looks for a replacement. Meanwhile, Jarrett and his producer Manfred Eicher are travelling from Switzerland in a rickety Renault 4, having exchanged their plane tickets for money. Jarrett is in a bad mood and has back problems.Playful Lessons
Director Ido Fluk is aware of the pitfalls of the genre and wants more than a nostalgic biopic with a colourful seventies flair. The countless metafictional, self-reflexive narrative tricks seem almost Dadaist, such as direct addresses to the audience, a somewhat awkward frame story around Vera's fiftieth birthday or playful lessons in jazz history, in which entire discographies roll across the screen. So there is jazz, but the actual soundtrack is provided by the somewhat cooler Krautrock of the time. An ingenious musical number to Floh de Cologne's Fließbandbaby (“Sei ruhig Fließbandbaby, heiraten!”) rocks more than all the corresponding attempts in Tom Tykwer's opening film Das Licht.Jazz Film With a Fun Factor
The strong acting performances in this post-modern bricolage are authentic, including the reliably great John Magaro as the tortured soul of artist Keith Jarrett. But above all, Mala Emde embodies the little bit of madness that the real Vera Brandes – who later worked as a producer and founded her own label – must have needed for her job. Vera has to beg and plead for her goal, and yet still keeps her head up proudly in the tough male domain of the music industry. For such a balancing act, an actress has to improvise, as Vera does in the case of the broken piano – and in this sense, Falk's film is a bit of jazz after all. It is unlikely to achieve the great jazz revival, even if it is clearly aimed at a young, international audience. But the film is a lot of fun to watch.February 2025