The Zen of Bennett Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

The Zen of Bennett Blu-ray Movie Review

Portrait of the artist as elderly statesman.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 23, 2012

There was a time when Tony Bennett wasn’t the coolest cat in the room. Ironically, it was when his long time record label Columbia was trying to make the legendary singer more palatable to younger listeners by having him record more youth oriented material, something they were also foisting on many of Bennett’s then label mates, to varying results. Bennett and Columbia had always been contentious musical bedfellows. Bennett considered himself a jazz singer, while Columbia’s musical director Mitch Miller favored middle of the road and novelty material for his new signees, something that chafed both Bennett and the somewhat contemporarily signed Rosemary Clooney, who perhaps had an even worse time of it in that regard, with tunes like “Come On-A My House” forced on her, whatever their ultimate nostalgic chic value has become. Bennett chugged along through the fifties with a number of impressive chart hits (many arranged by Percy Faith, whom Bennett evidently didn’t like very much), but he really became the gold standard of Columbia’s vocalists in 1962 when “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” hit the big time. (Ironically, it was the B-side of a single that was supposed to be Bennett’s next big hit, the lovely ballad “Once Upon A Time” by Adams and Strouse from the Broadway flop musical All American, which featured a book by one Mel Brooks.) But the rest of the sixties weren’t nearly as kind to Bennett. He continued to have a number of great selling singles and albums, but his foray into feature films (The Oscar, one of the worst films of all time featuring one of the most beautiful scores of all time, ironically by Percy Faith) was a spectacular failure, and his sales continued diminishing throughout the decade, ultimately leading to another spectacular flameout, the legendarily horrible Tony Sings the Great Hits of Today!, recorded in 1969 and released in early 1970. Bennett is on record as stating he hated the album, despite the fact that it includes a wealth of contemporary standards by the likes of Bacharach and David, Lennon and McCartney and others. But Bennett blamed Columbia (a long running situation between the two), and soon he cut himself loose from his album home of some two decades. The ensuing years found Bennett wandering in a self created wasteland of substance abuse if occasional artistic highlights like his collaborations with famed jazz pianist Bill Evans. It took nearly another decade for Bennett to reinvent himself, and once again irony was part of the equation: suddenly Bennett was cool once more by singing standards of yesteryear to a jaded younger audience who found the notion of The Great American Songbook somehow a salve for their own self inflicted cynicism.

The Zen of Bennett plays as a rather appealing companion piece to Tony Bennett: Duets II - The Great Performances. Zen was conceived by Bennett’s son Danny, and due to director Unjoo Moon's flash and flair, it’s a visually interesting amalgamation of snippets from the Duets II recording sessions combined with some brief archival footage and lots (and lots) of the elder Bennett’s philosophizing, sometimes via voiceover, sometimes to his collaborators, and often just in first person confessionals delivered straight to the camera. Some of this stuff may be unintentionally humorous, redolent of Grandpa Simpson’s rants about “back in my day. . .” on The Simpsons, but some of his comments, while wistful, reveal Bennett to be an intelligent if sometimes just slightly cranky elder statesman who calls ‘em as he sees ‘em.

Bennett seems especially concerned about today’s “disposable” society, aching for a time when quality mattered and crafting things that would last was an aspirational goal. In fact that seems to be one of his chief complaints about his early years at Columbia, when Mitch Miller foisted “cheap” knock off tunes on him that Miller knew would sell well but which for Bennett had no intrinsic value. This also seems to be what speaks (or sings) to Bennett so deeply about The Great American Songbook—namely, revisiting songs that have withstood the test of time and proven themselves to be sturdy, long lived artistic accomplishments.

There’s some now added poignance to both the duet Bennett recorded with Amy Winehouse as well as some of his comments before the session begins, where he talks about how “hooked” she is on drugs and how he hopes he can talk her out of her addiction. That may sound like the ultimate in naïvete, but of course Bennett himself struggled for years with both drug and alcohol problems, and he’s also on record here regarding the legendary Bill Evans and that pianist’s long heroin addiction, which Evans himself wrestled with unsuccessfully for many, many years. Winehouse is a rather stark contrast to someone like Carrie Underwood, who shows up with cupcakes for everyone and confesses to being very nervous about the session. Bennett has already revealed in an earlier confessional that he still feels butterflies before performing, and considers that a good sign, as it means he’s still invested in the outcome.

This is ultimately a very personal journey about and actually for Tony Bennett, including an emphasis on his painting and drawing career, a place where he was able to call the shots from the beginning. Bennett interacts with his kids and grandkids here and also in a way interacts with his ancestors as he seeks to trace the history of the Benedetto family. Danny Bennett calls The Zen of Bennett a “love letter” to his father, but it turns out this nicely wrought documentary is equally a love letter to everyone who has ever loved Tony Bennett.

The Zen of Bennett Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Zen of Bennett is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Columbia Music Video and RPM with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This documentary was lovingly lensed by Dion Beebe, who shot Rob Marshall's film version of Chicago and later won an Academy Award for Marshall's Memoirs of a Geisha. The documentary is occasionally showy with some montage and other techniques which separate it from less ambitious features of this ilk, but even in the straight ahead studio sessions, there's an elegance to the cinematography that pops really well in this high definition presentation. Despite the overall darkness of many of the studio segments, shadow detail is well above average and blacks are incredibly lustrous. Colors are very well saturated throughout this piece and contrast and fine object detail are also exceptional.

The Zen of Bennett Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Zen of Bennett features three audio options, one uncompressed LPCM mix in 5.1 and another in 2.0, as well as a standard Dolby Digital 5.1 mix. The documentary doesn't really offer a huge opportunity for incredible surround activity, but the musical snippets that dot the landscape are appropriately open and widely splayed throughout the side and rear channels. As should be expected, the confessional and dialogue sequences are anchored in the front channels. Fidelity is excellent and dynamic range is passably wide, considering the limitations of this form.

The Zen of Bennett Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Deleted Scenes include:

  Brian Henson Gives Tony a Chaplin Studios Tour (HD; 00:33). Music fans will know these were also the old A&M Studios.

  
  

  Tony and K.D. Lang (HD; 1:13)

  
  

  Tony and Susan Benedetto in the Studio with Lady Gaga (HD; 2:37)

  
  

  Tony and Michael Bublé: The Lost Art of Intimate Singing (HD; 00:53)

  
  

  Rehearsing at Tony's Apartment (HD; 00:58)

  
  

  "The Way You Look Tonight" Uncut (HD; 3:20)

  
  

  "What's the Point?" with Susan Benedetto and Everett Kinstler (HD; 00:59)

  
  

  With Willie Nelson on His Bus (HD; 00:54)

• Filmmaker Interviews include:

  Danny Bennett: Creator, Original Concept, Producer (1080i; 13:06)

  
  

  Unjoo Moon: Director (1080i; 5:56)

  
  

  Jennifer Lebeau: Producer (1080i; 3:51)

  
  

  Dion Beebe: Director of Photography (1080i; 7:40)

• Tribeca Film Festival Q&A (1080i; 22:35) features Danny Bennett, Unjoo Moon, Dion Beebe, Jennifer Lebeau, and Tony Bennett.

The Zen of Bennett Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Zen of Bennett is a nice, intimate portrait of one of the lions of American popular music. If Bennett occasionally comes off as a more brilliantly talented version of your Grandfather at times, in a way that only makes him more accessible and, well, cooler. Bennett has weathered his fair share of storms, some self-created, throughout his long career and as he basks now in the glow of his golden years, it's really wonderful to get to spend a little time with him in this way, however vicarious it may be. This Blu-ray looks and sounds great and comes with some nice supplementary material. Highly recommended.