# Dingo (1991)



## Guest (May 4, 2016)

Made mostly in Australia, it stars Colin Friels as a dingo-hunter who, as a boy, was touched by a jazz band that landed briefly in his town and played an impromptu concert on the tarmac of what passes for an airport in Australia. The bandleader is Miles Davis. Davis doesn't play himself although he seems to be playing his role as himself. It was the only acting role Davis ever took. The dingo-hunter is so entranced by Miles's trumpet-playing that he becomes a trumpeter himself and plays for years, even taking his trumpet with him on hunts. He is in a dance band but is not happy there. He longs to be a jazz man playing in front of jazz crowds. This is my favorite scene in the movie when he's playing at a dance but just blots it all out and imagines himself in a Paris nightclub playing before a jazz crowd. Strange that I only just found this movie:






The music for the film was composed by Miles and Michael Legrand but this piece is pure Miles--that horn. Only Miles could play so simple a phrase and turn it into pure beauty and art. Miles wasn't a lightning-fast player. Technically speaking, there are many far better than he as far as that goes. But instead of saying, "Look how many notes I can jam into one bar," Miles instead says, "Man, dig this one note. Just listen to the beauty of this note--naked and isolated, all by itself. Let it be your universe--inhabit it. Now, listen to me join it to another note. Now dig this new note. Listen to how those two notes go together and create pure harmony. Now, I'll add a third note. Listen to that! Did you ever dream that three notes could sound that beautiful?" That's what Miles brought to jazz's table--those long, languid, melodic lines. Instead wanting you to love all the many notes he plays, Miles wants you to just love one note for what it is. He doesn't want you to love his jazz, he wants you to love music itself--every single note, every single beat, every single rest. Each one is special. So don't lose the forest in the trees but look at every tree, every branch, every twig. Miles can entrance you with just one note which he plays the way nobody ever has or ever could. And that's jazz.


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