Pianomania

Pianomania is the thoroughly apt title for a thoroughly enjoyable documentary.

When sitting through this detail-heavy documentary, nonaficionados may feel like they're watching paint dry, albeit in the company of an artist who savors each and every shade.

Stefan Knüpfer's subtle charisma feels more suited to a beefily human New Yorker article than a documentary film.

Although there's more romance in "Buck," a classic American survivor story in the triumphant individual vein, in Pianomania the very dry, very accomplished Mr. Knüpfer makes engaging company both because he keeps enviable company and because he's a full-on geek, though one possessed by pianos.

As Pianomania gradually reveals, Knüpfer is able to do this so well because he is as much of a crazed perfectionist as the pianists themselves, maybe even more so.

It has a pleasing smallness -- it's cinematic chamber music -- that almost makes you overlook its inability to really explain its subject.

Directors Lilian Franck and Robert Cibis fail to plumb their subject's frustrations or any other insightful biographical details.