Hands down the most moving thing I’ve watched lately is the documentary American Symphony, about musician Jon Batiste and his partner (now wife), writer Suleika Jaouad. And what I mean is I felt like my heart was in a vise the entire time.

I came at it knowing only what pretty much anyone would know about him — extremely talented and charismatic musician, Stephen Colbert’s bandleader, all those Grammy noms — and all I knew about her was that their Brooklyn townhouse had been featured in Architectural Digest in November, and that she had collaborated with Hudson Valley designer Hallie Goodman on it, which is why I knew that. I had seen the photos on Instagram via Hallie (who I follow) and simply thought wow, gorgeous people, gorgeous home, what a nice life. 🙌

The photos were so good that I bought that issue of AD, which is a rarity for me. As much as I love a shelter magazine — and loved what I had seen of Batiste and Jaouad’s highly personal, idiosyncratic, antiques-filled home — I’m not generally interested in the sort of high-end designer houses that AD is full of. So even after I bought the issue, it sat unread for a while.

A couple of months ago, I turned on the documentary, American Symphony, being forever interested in creativity and creative people. A few minutes into it, I knew my husband would also want to see it, and by the 30-minute mark, there was that aforementioned vise around my heart, and I turned it off so we could watch it together another time, which we finally did. 

In short, it is, conceptually, a behind-the-scenes look at a year in Batiste’s life, during which he is composing a symphony (also called American Symphony), to be performed at Carnegie Hall, while working on the Colbert show, touring, and being on the receiving end of the most Grammy nominations of the year — but also, as it happened, while Jaouad was being treated for leukemia after a decade in remission. As powerful as the film is, I knew there was even more to the story, because I had read the AD piece in the meantime, which turned out to be her first-person account of the renovation that was happening during that same period. The documentary shows us them getting quickly married in a bare living room without mentioning it was the living room of the house they had just bought — to be their first home together — and had only begun renovating when they got her diagnosis. It shows us her taking up painting in the hospital, when she couldn’t write, but not that she was also collaborating on the design of the house from that hospital bed, an act not just of creativity-as-a-lifeline but of profound optimism.

You’ve heard the expression about having compassion for everyone you meet because you never know what battles they may be fighting, and we associate it (or at least I do) with people who are rude or withdrawn or something, but it was all I could think about as Batiste goes necessarily about the job of being a performer, entertaining crowd after crowd while bearing the load of that treacherous time in their private life offstage. Talk about ‘living in the world of collapse and delight.’ After his performance at the Oscars last month, the camera panned to Jaouad in the audience, beaming with pride and joy. Had I not known what I did then, I would have thought oh that’s his lovely wife who made that beautiful home. But seeing her there, dressed up and enjoying herself, took on so much more dimension at that point, even before I had watched the rest of the documentary. 

This is kind of a long post for a quick recommendation, yet dreadfully short of an actual review. Without saying too much about it, I’m saying it’s a powerful story, powerfully told, and I highly recommend both the movie and the AD article. And for more of Jaouad, her book is Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted, and her current project is The Isolation Journals over on Substack.

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[ IMAGES: Photo of the magazine by me + the official movie poster for American Symphony, directed by Matthew Heineman, streaming on Netflix ]