They Came to Play

Alex Rotaru

United States

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Synopsis

Portrayal of several multi-talented amateur pianists striving to balance their work, home, and musical lives following them to an international competition.

REVIEW

There's no ivory coasting in Alex Rotaru's engaging chronicle of the 2007 International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs, with 75 of the world's top amateur pianists in a spirited contest sponsored by the Van Cliburn Foundation in Fort Worth, Texas.

A crowd-pleaser in the vein of "Spellbound", the first half-hour of "They Came to Play" spans the globe to capture snapshot profiles of 10 contenders. Alabama ophthalmologist Drew Mays hopes to correct the stereotype of a Deep South hayseed. Philadelphia music teacher Annette DiMedeo was told early in her career by the Liberace organization that she said needed an act to succeed--so she became a pianist-ventriloquist with a wooden dummy substituting as her "manager." Berlin physicist Eberhard Zagrosek is old enough to remember when the Allies entered his Bavarian village in May 1945. France's tennis coach Anne-Marie Rouchon, who once played against Billie Jean King, also has a World War II memory: her first taste of chocolate from a U.S. soldier when the Americans liberated Paris. Henri-Robert Delbeau is a tango-happy internal medicine physician from Jackson Heights, while Kent Lietzau from Rockville, Md., is a vice president of corporate strategy marketing for Lockheed Martin. Greg Fisher runs a glass mirror shop in Edmond, Okla., and is not shy about divulging his unsavory past as a cocaine addict. Esfir Ross is a jolly dental assistant from Oakland, Calif. ("I have all my teeth!"). And from Fort Worth, meet jeweler James Raphael, who in 1995 composed variations on the Hativka, Israel's national anthem, as a dedication to Holocaust victims, and Clark Griffith, a "professional" AIDS patient since 1995, and given to droll remarks such as "Homosexuals are the last people who it's OK to feel uncomfortable about."

During the three-day competition's winnowing-down process at Texas Christian University, however, members of director Rotaru's cinematic cross-section begin to drop out, as other contenders then step up to vie for screen time. They include investment analyst Ken Jisaka from Mill Valley, Calif., and Phoenix, Ariz., court litigator Mark Fuller, the latter suffering from Hodgkins disease. And for those who dote on reality-TV fodder like "American Idol", they'll be unprepared for the unexpected dramatic turns taken by "They Came to Play", because director Rotaru makes you instinctively care for these modest musicians. Don't expect "Chopsticks" as a musical selection, yet there's plenty of classical music pieces during the climactic competition that contribute to this documentary's pleasantly sonic earful, with Raphael's rigorous presentation of Manuel de Fallas' "Ritual Fire Dance" as a highlight, although his piano bench didn't survive the performance. Van Cliburn himself chimes in with some inscrutable Yoda-esque wisdom ("You learn so much from each performance and the more you will learn about yourself, the less you know."), yet perhaps director Rotaru's sweetest visual lingers on volunteer Louise Canafax, a backstage mom who at one point sleeps backstage underneath a blanket studded with G clefs.

-Bill DeLapp