The new documentary about jazz pianist Cyrus Barlow's late career resists most of the conventions of the contemporary music-documentary form. The film is patient where the form has become hurried, observational where the form has become editorial, and trusts the music where the form increasingly defaults to commentary about the music.

What it observes

The film observes Barlow across two years of his late practice: rehearsals with his trio, occasional solo sessions, three concerts captured in full, and the quieter daily routine that supports a musician's life at his stage of career.

What it refuses

The film refuses the talking-head structure that contemporary music documentary has defaulted to. There are no on-screen interviews with critics, no archival montages of the subject's earlier career, no narrative arc engineered around external events. What the film has, instead, is the music and the texture of the practice that produces it.

The verdict

The film is the kind of music documentary that justifies the form when the form's broader output drifts toward more aggressive editorial choices. Barlow's playing is the principal reason to see the film; the film's discipline in letting the playing remain central is what makes the experience cumulatively powerful.