So many interesting ideas in here, but it feels like the film never fully explores any of them. 

Batiste is undoubtedly a musical genius, but I can’t help but think the film would be better told through Suleika’s perspective. Watching her partner own the Grammys through a television screen was, to me, the most interesting part of the movie. The happiness you feel for someone you love achieving their dream. The regret that you can’t be there. The guilt of maybe wishing your partner were there for you instead of in Las Vegas. How does one cope with all of these feelings? 

The documentary is technically very well-made, which is both a blessing and a curse. You get some beautiful…

I’ve been aware of Jon’s existence, and I recognize his face, but I’ve never stopped to listen to his music, and—please don’t kill me!—for a long time I thought Jon Batiste and Jon Brion were the same. Not that they looked the same, obviously, but they were referring to the same person. That’s how far gone my knowledge of Batiste was. So needless to say, this was a pretty educative, enlightening watch where I finally got to hear his music properly and also get to know him as a person. And I really loved the way this is all framed, not only as another music documentary about an ambitious musician but also as a love story about his wife battling…

Didn’t love this as much as I thought I would. It didn’t have as much of a narrative through line as I thought it would. I know docs can veer off from what the filmmaker set out to capture. In fact, that’s one of the things I love about them. But this never really felt like it had a focus. We get Jon Batiste and Suleika Jaouad and their relationship, Batiste setting out to compose an American Symphony, Suleika’s battle with a recurrence of cancer, Batiste’s grammy wins and performance, and the performance of the symphony at Carnegie Hall. As presented, there never really feels like a connection between any of these segments. In some ways, it kind of just feels…

Two of my three issues with this documentary are addressed within the film itself. Firstly, that Batiste is not really a musician that anyone seems to actually listen to, despite his monumental success; that take is floated by the most conservative and latently racist sounding audio clips during a down moment in the film, which serves as a rebuttal in the telling.

Second is Batiste's aw shucks positive attitude, a mask which he, very briefly, one time, takes off, deconstructs and analyses the pieces of through an insightful racial lens only to then readorn the thing, never to mention or drop it again.

This ties into the third and touchiest of my criticisms, which is to do with his wife's…