MOVIE REVIEW : A LIGHT ON THE ‘NIGHT’ MUSIC

In “Bring on the Night” (selected theaters), Sting and a small collection of premier jazz musicians work to form a new band in the outlandish surroundings of a rented French chateau. At the same time, director/documentarian Michael Apted works cannily to catch the event. He pops in a relaxed interview here, an hilarious bit of cinema verite there, and lets us watch as the small details of a vocal arrangement are adjusted and fiddled with.

What Apted is attempting, quite shamelessly, is to make us accomplices in this creation, to get to know these musicians individually, to have us begin to worry about the success of their first concert in Paris. And he succeeds.

It’s not quite real--these four musicians and two backup vocalists had been put together for the first time three months before in Barbados, where they recorded Sting’s first solo album “The Dream of the Blue Turtles,” many of whose songs we hear here. The film is actually an elegant re-creation of that first searching energy. Its French chateau was chosen by production designer Ferdinando Scarfiotti; the witty clothes are the work of costume designer Colleen Atwood. (You want to believe, however, that Branford Marsalis’ purple Lakers’ sweat shirt is all his own.)

“Bring on the Night” works if you know the Sting canon by heart or if this is your first exposure to his music. You may not feel you know him by the end of the film, but his music is eloquent enough and Apted has combined music and image to let us imagine we have seen the man himself.

(That man emerges as tightly controlled, intelligent and enigmatic--by design. While Trudie Styler, Sting’s companion of years, says in a pleased tone that “the band has . . . lightened him up a lot; he’s not reading so many books,” to an outsider he’s still opaque as marble, as smooth and as cool.)

But there’s nothing at all cool about his songs or the way he works with this handpicked band. The musicians come out good and clear, especially young, ebullient Branford Marsalis, the boy from a musical family, who took up the sax because he noticed that with a saxophone you could get women. Marsalis (a four-year veteran of brother Wynton’s jazz group) has, at 25, his wits about him and his feet firmly on the ground. A long, insider’s look at pop superstardom from close up has left him unimpressed: “I want to barf. It’s not my attitude; not what I was put on earth to be.”

We meet the other instrumentalists: bass player Darryl Jones, ex of Miles Davis’ band, who is still wary that what they form will become a band , in which every person will have an equal part. Kenneth Kirkland, who plays keyboard and snatches of Brahms to amuse himself, is round-faced and upbeat, another veteran of the Wynton Marsalis quintet. And there is bearded Omar Hakim, drummer for Weather Report, whose drums are lit during the concert so that his cymbals seem to be on fire, which is what it sounds like.

The men and Janice Pendarvis and Dolette McDonald, the two kicky backup singers, rehearse. Trudie Styler awaits Sting’s and her second baby (his fourth). The Chateau du Courson is invaded by an implacable French tour guide, showing his antique audience treasures even older than they: exquisite marquetry, a portrait of Napoleon’s mother. (They are gallant about this echoing band and its equipment, snaking across parquet floors, rattling the French doors.)

We are wound up to worry about the success or failure of the Paris concert. The concert will be 50% new material. Sting says no one goes out and does music the audience doesn’t know. Big risk. Miles Copeland, Sting’s manager, previews the gray-on-gray clothes for the band at the concert site. It is an ominous moment. “Brechtian,” the designer breathes, hopefully. “It was Sting’s idea.”

“Boring,” Copeland says firmly. The odd shocking pink sweater is added.

Then the music floods over us at the concert, and what Apted has aimed for has happened. We hear these songs like old friends, we’ve been introduced to them, have had time to let the words sink in. They are impassioned songs, about the closing of mines, and the dead young soldiers of World War I, and love in all its permutations.

Ralf Bode’s camera is everywhere, catching amused glances between the musicians, finding a soloist as he lights up the place, caressing the simmering drums. And we know the band, every one of them; we root for the one backup singer who was the junior high school teacher and the other who used to answer the phones at a bawdyhouse. It’s a glorious melange, not one bit of which is lost on this screaming Parisian audience.

Then, a coda after the second night of the concert. As the music and the images mount together, we are present at the birth of Trudie’s and Sting’s son, and the music is a simple song that wonders quietly if the Russians do not also love their children too. And from the tender look on Sting’s face, perhaps we have glimpsed something of the private man at last.

‘BRING ON THE NIGHT’ A Samuel Goldwyn Co. presentation of an A&M; Films production. Executive producers Gil Friesen, Andrew Meyer. Producer David Manson. Director Michael D. Apted. Film editor, associate producer Robert K. Lambert. Camera Ralf D. Bode. Costumes Colleen Atwood. Production design Ferdinando Scarfiotti. Music producer Pete Smith, Sting. Technical adviser Vic Garbarini. Film editor Melvin Shapiro. With Sting, Omar Hakim, Darryl Jones, Kenny Kirkland, Branford Marsalis, Dolette McDonald, Janice Pendarvis, Trudie Styler.

Running time: 1 hour, 37 minutes.

MPAA-rated: PG-13 (parents are strongly cautioned to give special guidance for attendance of children under 13).