OSCARS 2025: Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat (2024)

In theory, the Oscars are meant to recognize the best and brightest films from the previous year. Ideally, there would be no bias or insinuating circumstances influencing the choices the Academy makes. Of course, the very opposite is true, the AMPAS voters being extremely susceptible to any number of factors. One of which is the general atmosphere of the year before. While the slate of nominees should probably be read simply as s selection from a wide catalogue of choices, you can't help but look for connecting themes. The documentary line-up this year, perhaps more so than in past years, seems defined by fighting social injustices amid a world turned towards imperialism and authoritarianism. In other words, I'm learning so much about the awful things people in power have done to lower classes this year, usually in the name of expanding their own empire. “Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat” is maybe the most literal example of this, an epic length documentary that connects some unexpected dots as it tells an all-too familiar tale: U.S. intelligence using subterfuge and espionage to destabilizing another country, all in the name of defeating the nebulous threat of "communism."

The film recalls a specific chapter in the history of the U.N. and American imperialism, with an unexpected link to pop culture. In 1960, sixteen newly independent African countries join the United Nations, ushering in what Nikita Khrushchev considered the beginning of the post-colonialism era. Among the newly accepted countries is what was then known as the Republic of the Congo or Congo-Leopaldville. Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba calls for a united Africa but is quickly forced into exile by a military coup. This is the work of the Belgium monarchy, eager to maintain control of their former colony for its highly valuable mineral resources. Such as their uranium mines, which is used to entice the United States – knee-deep in the nuclear arms race with the Soviets – into helping out the scheme. The CIA utilizes an unexpected plan: Send beloved American jazz singers to the Congo as a cover for special agents to ultimately capture and assassinate Lumumba. Unknowingly, the likes of Louis Armstrong, Nina Simone, Dizzy Gillespie, and Duke Ellington become pawns in a plan to destabilize an African nation. 

The first thing you're going to notice about “Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat” is how it looks and sounds. The term “video essay” has been largely co-opted by Youtubers, many of them of debatable talent. However, director Johan Grimonprez reminds us about the term's value. “Soundtrack” is cut together from hundreds of hours of video archives. The editing is extremely fast-paced, a countless number of vintage clips being woven together to create a visual collage. The composition of the film matches the jazz soundtrack, leaping around wildly and often mixing different formats – newsreel, classic concert footage, TV clips, and frantic on-screen text – into an at-times overwhelming swirl of information. At two hours and thirty minutes long, “Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat” is extremely dense, loaded with history, personal reflections, details, and unearthed comments. It's the kind of film you will learn things from. It all goes by so quickly that you will probably learn something new every time you watch it.

The jazz music isn't chosen only because those are the musicians involved in this true story. Like a bebop rhythm, the film jumps around between different topics. At first, sixties jazz singers and a U.S./Belgium-backed coup in the Congo don't seem to have much in common. Grimonprez' film uses a wildly erratic pattern to find the connective dots between all these themes. The jazzy pacing will start at Khrushchev banging his shoe on the table at the U.N., jump over to the political upheaval of Africa in the sixties, move on to the jazz scene of the day, link that to the civil rights movement, and then circle back around to the coup in the Congo and American imperialism. It sounds scattered and maybe it is at times. The feeling is one of a solo, meandering and impulsive. However, this approach also finds the unexpected connective fiber between these seemingly unrelated events. Is this how the intelligence departments have always worked, confusing people with a wild swirl of different tactics and info? 

The manic presentation often contributes a dark sense of humor to this story, finding an absurdity in the apparent unlikeliness of these connections, and mining comedy from some well-timed quotes. That's a good thing because, otherwise, “Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat” would be a dispiriting watch. This is, in many ways, a tale we all know by now. The end of World War II changed the balance of power for the entire globe. Continents that had been chopped up among European superpowers decades before we're left on their own, many immediately turning towards left-wing politics. And that was a threat to the United States and their war against Communism, necessitating the CIA to step in and destabilize every people's revolution they knew of.

That's what we were told anyway. However, by digging right down into the motivation for these actions, “Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat” thoroughly demystifies the Cold War era. It was about money. It was always about money. The U.S. and its allies didn't want to let go of the valuable resources of these nations they controlled for so long. The plan they utilized just happened to cause untold suffering and death for millions of people. It's nothing we shouldn't know by now. However, to see how truly petty the spymasters and heads of state were, to show how much greed and bigotry truly drove international decisions with ramifications on countless lives, certainly makes an impact. With enough distance, the 20th century can't help but play as dark comedy, the viewer forced to laugh at the unending absurdity and boundless cruelty of it all or else go insane.

Impressively, Grimonprez cut the film together with commercially available tools like Adobe Premiere and DaVinci Resolve. Kind of makes you feel like you could make an Academy Award nominated movie in your own free time too, doesn't it? However, it probably wouldn't hurt to be an expert in a myriad of topics, allowing for a similarly clever linking of ideas and a downpour of information. In a time when the term “video essay” is most associated with people recapping episodes of children's television, it's nice to see someone actually use the format for something subversive, clever, and genuinely educational. [7/10]