Oscar-nominated documentary Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat belies its two primary interests right there in the title: music and geopolitics. At times, their connection in the 20th century was exceptionally clear, such as through the "jazz ambassador" program, through which musical legends such as Louis Armstrong were sponsored by the United States Department of State in the 1950s and 1960s to promote American values and cultural soft power by traveling to places like Africa. This was useful during the Congo Crisis, for example, in which newfound Congolese independence was marred by Western interference and tens of thousands were killed. America and the Soviet Union fueled the Crisis as a proxy to the Cold War; it was useful to the US to try to seem like the "good guy" through jazz while the CIA was undermining democratically-elected politicians and arming militia. 

But in director Johan Grimonprez's film, which runs 150 minutes and covers decades of exceedingly complex history, more often than not the musical-geopolitical dynamic is more tenuous, and the balance between the two is out of whack. 

Grimonprez is Belgian, so his interest in the Congo is understandable. The Congo came under colonial rule by King Leopold II of Belgium in the 1800s, who implemented systems of ruthless violence to extract huge amounts of natural resources and impose strict racial segregation for nearly a hundred years. (Belgium has since officially apologized to some degree for colonization and related wrongdoings.) But Grimonprez's art-film background, formed at Belgian art school, the School of Visual Arts in New York, and the Whitney Museum, gets in the way of telling a coherent narrative about the complicated histories of European involvement in Africa, American global affairs and espionage, and Soviet inroads into Africa and other Non-Aligned Movement member states. Gimonprez’s art education formulated a perspective informed by meta-critique of film as a medium; his own website opens on a 1994 essay titled “Against Documentary” that serves as a send-up of the very movies he makes, mocking the director for putting money towards “yet another film on political strife.” This academic perspective is well-suited to film essays, gallery videos, and art history analysis, but plays less well in a traditional documentary format on music and politics. 

Indeed, Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat flips back and forth between its two subjects and rarely settles on a timeline or relational theory of events. Clips of African political campaigns are interspersed with African-American thought leaders like Malcolm X; brassy jazz solos in New York nightclubs are cut with dealings at the United Nations Security Council; bold typographic choices are handsome but fill the screen for frustrating amounts of time. Throughout, it's hard not to marvel at the quality of the archival footage, or the remarkable beauty of the selected jazz pieces, but it all comes in barrages of content. 

Some vignettes are told well. When Nikita Khrushchev and Che Guevara together visit American soil for a United Nations event, and spend time cavorting together in Harlem and giving media appearances on the sidewalk outside the historical Hotel Theresa, the energy is infectious through the screen (and could be a movie unto itself). Plus, the hip, jiving score matches the moment. Similarly, protestors' storming of the UN General Assembly is powerful, especially as it's paired with a song featuring a single primal scream. Unleashing the pent-up anger towards Western imperialism comes in both physical rioting and musical cacophony. 

Other choices are less harmonious. Grimonprez is infatuated with the United Nations; he credits Khrushchev's shoe-banging incident in the General Assembly as inspiration for the documentary. But the movie's coverage of the UN is one-note and repetitive; we see, over and over again, a bloc of Asian and African countries voting for a motion, just for the US to stand against it, and the Soviet Union responding with the same tired stump speeches. All this posturing is familiar to any student who did Model UN in high school, and doesn't merit its share of the film. 

Soundtrack misses elsewhere, too. For instance, a few of the interviews are especially haunting in their cavalier attitude towards cruelty exhibited to the Congolese people. In one, CIA Director Allen Dulles jokes about how the Agency interfered with local elections; in others, several mercenaries describe, tongue in cheek, the indiscriminate killing of Congolese people for money. One German gun-for-hire even flashes his Iron Cross from service to the Nazi army. These moments show the craven underside of the Congo Crisis on full display. However, Grimonprez refuses to linger on some of these overwhelming or vile parts of history, which does the film a disservice. Instead of letting the audience sit with a particularly shocking piece of information, Soundtrack repeatedly turns directly to an upbeat jazzy number or yet another UN hearing. Although the dissonance could maybe work in a museum setting, it becomes exhausting for several hours in a theater. 

The same is true for multiple fourth-wall-breaking cuts to modern advertisements for Apple and Tesla that pepper the movie. While the ads overtly connect modern technological products to the minerals made possible by Congolese mining, it's done in a way so painfully obvious that some audience members giggled. (Connecting the past to our present could have been accomplished in a more thoughtful way; a momentary clip, late in the movie, of a modern forced evacuation of a Congolese family is far more effective as a tie-in to the 21st century.) 

Grimonprez's efforts to comb through mountains of historic footage, first-person accounts, and jazz pieces were no doubt heroic. If only his findings were crafted into a tighter, clearer narrative.