A combat filmmaker, Richard Desjardins has shaken up the cage with films like L’ERROR BORÉALE and Trou Story, where he denounces the excesses in the exploitation of our natural resources. Here he is again where we least expected him, with a beautiful documentary where he portrays the composer who is the absolute idol and the ordeal of pianists: Chopin.
The opening sequence of Chip Chip – Chopin by Desjardins is surprising. On the screen, the image of large chimneys as eternal as hell and the voice of Richard Desjardins, who, in his famously severe tone, recounts that at the beginning of the last century, millionaires from New York got their hands on a copper deposit “the size of Place Ville Marie” in Abitibi and built a foundry on it. We are looking for the link with Chopin…
It will come quickly: since no one wanted to go to work at the bottom of the hole dug in Rouyn-Noranda, the mining industry attracted people from Eastern Europe – from Ukraine and Poland, in particular. Who carried their culture and their poetry in their backpack. “Like Chopin,” explains Desjardins, “who helped me live my life the way I wanted. »
We know the lyricism of Desjardins when he takes up the piano. This delicate touch is the polar opposite of his raw voice, these melodies as elegant as his poetry can be romantic. It is less known that, since childhood, the author of Tu m’aimes-tu has been captivated by Chopin, by his waltzes and his studies which gave him a hard time on the piano as much as they moved him completely. throughout his life.
“I am able to recognize Chopin even when it plays in a small speaker in the garage two blocks from our house,” assures Desjardins. His mother played it occasionally. He tried it himself, but quickly gave up.
Chip Chip – Chopin by Desjardins is a very personal project. After the opening about the mine, he sets off in the footsteps of this composer who fascinates him. We thus follow Desjardins to Warsaw, where Chopin was born to a French father and a Polish mother, and then to France, where he spent his adult life and experienced a passionate love with the woman of letters George Sand. It was she who nicknamed him Chip Chip.
It tells of the sick young man (he contracted tuberculosis as a teenager), the gifted pianist, the demanding and uncompromising composer who will almost never perform in concert halls. He wasn’t interested in performing in public, says Desjardins. “It intimidated him, plus he didn’t play hard. » The most delicate passages of his music were not, in fact, suitable for the acoustics of the rooms of the time.
Desjardins tells the story of the composer through interviews with specialists, who share enlightening observations both on his music and on the evolution of the piano itself. He also met experienced pianists, including Charles Richard-Hamelin (silver medalist at the prestigious Frédéric Chopin International Piano Competition in Warsaw) and jazz pianist Marianne Trudel.
With them, he dissects the aesthetic innovations of the Franco-Polish composer. “Chopin stems from what was done before him, but it also marks a break,” underlines Richard Desjardins. He “liberated” the right hand, also granted himself unprecedented freedom in terms of tones, modulations, harmonic “color”, while ensuring that it was not shocking to the ear.
Chopin influenced Ravel and Debussy. “I put forward the hypothesis that it would also be one of the roots of jazz,” says Richard Desjardins. This he demonstrates in particular in the company of Charles Richard-Hamelin, who highlights an agreement with Chopin which, according to him, sets foot in Herbie Hancock. Marianne Trudel, who considers Chopin’s style to be the “pinnacle of expressionist piano”, traces his influence back to Brazilian bossa nova.
Throughout his quest, Richard Desjardins also tells a little about himself. Just a little, because on screen as in interviews, he never really reveals himself. He dodges, as always, overly personal questions and is even surprised when Marianne Trudel tells him she hears traces of Chopin in her own style. “Do you think I would have been influenced? », he asks her, looking more embarrassed than surprised.
“I was already aware while composing that, in certain pieces, there was a bit of Chopin,” he admits in an interview. Among others in the solo which comes after the second verse in The Lisa Effect (a song from his album Boom Boom). There is a rubato – stolen time – something that Chopin loved very much. »
Did following in Chopin’s footsteps give Richard Desjardins the desire to compose new songs and perform again? “I’m busy elsewhere,” he says when asked about the scene. “I have,” he replies, when asked about new songs. I have some stock to move forward, but I’m not in the mood…” We feel him uncomfortable, bothered to talk about his life as a singer. While waiting for something new – fingers crossed – we can do like Desjardins: go in search of Chopin, but looking for traces of it in his own songs.
