Ethan Hawke met 85-year-old Seymour Bernstein at a dinner party. “I have been struggling recently with finding [out] why it is that I do what I do,” confesses the actor, seemingly in the throes of a midlife crisis, in his nonfiction directorial debut. “I immediately felt safe around him to talk to him about some of these things. At this one dinner, Seymour helped me more than anyone in my own profession had been able to.”
Bernstein isn’t a self-help guru or even a therapist, but a piano instructor. After retiring from performing at age 50, he finally found his real calling as a teacher. Accordingly, “Seymour: An Introduction” isn’t just a portrait of the open-faced, soft-spoken musician, but also a compendium of tutorial anecdotes and poetic aphorisms he’s collected over the years. Hawke’s approach is apostolic, as if he’s recording for posterity the sublime wisdom of a philosophical master.
To be sure, Bernstein makes for a captivating documentary subject. Eloquent and amiable, he tells moving accounts of “drowning in luxuries” during a year inside a patroness’ gilded cage and putting on an impromptu classical-music concert as a soldier in the Korean War. Though he’s reticent about his setbacks (or perhaps those interview excerpts didn’t make it into the final cut), his generosity of spirit as a teacher is authentic, as is his conviction that pedagogy can be just as creative and as urgent as any artistic expression. A discussion between Bernstein and two other concert pianists proves unexpectedly rousing when the trio rail against the “‘Flashdance fallacy” that raw talent is more exciting than decades of practice and craftsmanship.
Having played the piano for all but the first six years of his life, Bernstein expounds on a range of topics related to music — such as stage fright, the cultivation of eccentricities by performers, and the selfish and neurotic personalities of artists (this last issue is broached by Hawke during one of his infrequent appearances) — and punches up truisms with charming anecdotes attributed to Sarah Bernhardt, Maria Callas, or “a Zen philosopher.”
Whether you’ll enjoy “Seymour” will probably depend greatly on how well you appreciate Bernstein’s sincere odes to the nobility of art, as when he says that “through [the] language [of music] we become one with the stars.” For my part, I found more interesting his evocative musical advice during piano lessons like, “You don’t want to play a staccato that sounds like you’re jogging through the park.”
Most of the brief running time is occupied by talking-head interviews, close-ups on still photographs, and repetitive scenes of Bernstein in the middle of one-on-one lessons or master classes, with students playing the same musical phrase with minor variations. Hawke is probably too respectful a director and disciple to challenge anything that his subject says, or even query about the vaguest outlines of his personal life. (We learn only that Bernstein has lived in the same one-bedroom apartment for 57 years.) The title is truth in advertising; “Seymour” really is only an introduction.
The film concludes with a rare public performance by the pianist, but there’s no emotional buildup to this tiny concert, which seemingly takes place in a Steinway store. The several scenes of Bernstein picking out the grand piano he’ll play on don’t count, and of course he’s been a pro for too many decades to falter on stage. Yet those final scenes might hold they key to enjoying “Seymour” at its best — as a lovely piano concert with occasionally compelling verbal and visual accompaniment.