Where Bolden boldly fails, City of a Million Dreams enchants

Published July 13, 2019 4:00am ET



With 2019 being the year of movies celebrating British-originated rock music of the 1960s (Beatles) and 1970s (Elton John and Queen), Americans should take time to view a film about our own most indigenous and ingenious music: jazz from the 1890s and 1900s.

Bolden, now available to stream, is an uneven, less-than-fully satisfying flick about traditional jazz pioneer Charles “Buddy” Bolden. But its soundtrack, arranged by the Lincoln Center’s Wynton Marsalis, is marvelously listenable all the way through the must-remain-for credits. Moreover, for all its narrative failures, Bolden succeeds at communicating an appropriate sense of the mythic to viewers unfamiliar with jazz’s hazy origins.

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