Tuesday, February 4, 2025

Soundtrack to a Coup D' Etat





It is not to diminish Johan Grimonprez's Soundtrack to a Coup D’ Etat to say the title is one of the most powerful aspects of the documentary, currently playing at Film Forum. Patrice Lumumba meets Louis Armstrong with CIA director Allen Dulles as impresario. At one point, a rioter stealing King Baudouin's sword adds a memorable and inadvertent dance number as he skillfully eludes his pursuers. Soundtrack also happens to be a masterpiece that transcends its own historical preoccupations in the way that say The Battle of Algiers or The Sorrow and the Pity are. An earlier coup d’etat—that of Mosedegh was good practice--though that one didn’t have musical accompaniment, nor did the later ousting of Allende in Chile. Regimen toppling, in the name of the balance of power in South America, Africa and the Middle East was the CIA’s job description in what almost seem like halcyon times compared to the present. Now it’s 
Kristallnacht, with the books being burned once again! Truffaut didn’t take this seriously enough in his adaptation of Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Hail Caesar or Sieg Heil?

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