Before embarking on any sort of biopic, it’s important for a filmmaker to ask themselves – is this story actually interesting, or is it just name-brand? It’s a question a lot of biographies, particularly ones based around musicians, fall flat on, but one that Everybody Digs Bill Evans, the fiction feature debut of documentarian Grant Gee, hurdles with ease. I knew nothing of the titular jazz pianist going in, but Gee and writer Mark O’Halloran (actually adapting Owen Martell’s novel about Evans, Intermission, instead of directly tackling the history) turn him and his family into truly beguiling cinematic figures, written excellently and acted to perfection.
Set mostly in 1961, we first meet Bill Evans (as played by Norwegian actor Anders Danielsen Lie, a choice that is a little distracting right at the start but soon feels completely natural) in the midst of a great gig, the recordings of which will go on to become two of his most famous albums. Very quickly, though, Bill’s bassist Scotty, with whom he shares a profound artistic sympatico, is killed in a car crash, sending Bill into a spiral of heroin and self-imposed exile from music. Gee lets the jazz of it all infuse into his storytelling style, cutting backwards and forwards rapidly – though never randomly – moments of triumph and despair sitting on top of and around one another in an enrapturing way.
Bill ends up staying with his brother Harry (Barry Ward), a music teacher and quietly embittered Salieri-in-miniature who both loves his little brother and is deeply envious of his more natural, more brilliant talent. The first third or so of the film concerns itself with Bill trying to make it work in his brother’s spare room, largely for the sake of Harry’s wife Pat (Katie McGrath) and young daughter, who adore Bill, but failing to thanks to his heroin habit. Gee and O’Halloran are unsparing in showing us the annihilating power of heroin, though there’s only so many ways to make such a played-out premise novel.
Where Everybody Digs Bill Evans really takes flight, then, is when Bill is shipped off to Florida to get clean with his retired parents. Usually, when one describes a character as ‘coming in from a different film’, it’s meant as criticism, but here Gee uses their tonal whiplash – a quiet, suburban life worlds away from New York and music and dope – as a perfect blindside, shifting the mood into a beautiful and funny tale of healing. As dad Harry Sr and mum Mary, Bill Pullman and Laurie Metcalf are just staggeringly good; you feel them carrying around their characters’ entire lives in their performances without ever getting too heavy. Pullman, in particular, whether Harry’s grousing about his Welsh heritage or using drunkenness to finally give himself an excuse to truly express how much he loves his wife and son, is doing the finest acting I’ve seen on screen in all of 2026.
It’s extremely impressive how casually Gee and O’Halloran seem to be able to put together incredibly affecting scenes – you don’t realise just how tightly Everybody Digs Bill Evans has you in its clutches until you suddenly get a scene of Bill breaking out of his own self-pity to play his music for his family and you’re on the verge of tears. It’s always a shame, then, whenever we cut to one of the flash-forwards (shot in deliberately sickly colour as opposed to the crisp black and white of 1961), which are far more conventionally melodramatic. Unfortunately, it’s in this mode that Everybody Digs Bill Evans approaches its overly drawn-out finale and while it’s hardly enough to erase everything that’s been done so right beforehand, it is a real shame to end such a breezily fantastic film on a duff note like that.
Cleverly written, sharply directed, and magnificently acted, Gee’s first non-documentary film is a thrilling calling card should he want to continue in the fiction feature space going forward, even if it lets itself down right at the end (as a lot of first features are wont to do). With its louche, particular style, deep melancholy, and obscure subject matter, it’s entirely possible that not everybody will dig Bill Evans, but I for one most certainly did.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 