If you can watch American Symphony without crying at least once, then you might need to have your tear glands checked. The documentary is about musician, Jon Batiste, and his wife, Suleika, a bestselling author and Emmy Award-winning journalist. Around the same time Batiste decides to compose a symphony that reflects the diversity of music in America, he learns that his wife’s leukemia has returned.

The opening scene showed Batiste sitting in a snowy field, staring into the distance. As the camera stayed focused on his face, I noticed a drop of “moisture” clinging to the tip of his nose. The mother in me wanted to hand him a Kleenex. How could the film editor not notice that drop?

Further into the film, I realized that leaving the drop in the scene was intentional, a foreboding that the movie wasn’t going to shy away from gritty details of both triumph and tragedy in the couple’s life. In the trailer, Suleika says, “I feel like we’re living a life of contrasts.” Batiste responds, “I’m always in awe of Suleika, how she deals with hardship.” She says, “My first day of chemo, his eleven Emmy nominations were announced.”

The movie follows Suleika’s grueling chemo treatments. Juxtaposed with those scenes, we view Batiste composing music, collaborating with musicians of all backgrounds, and ultimately performing the symphony. Often, Batiste plays his music in Suleika’s hospital to comfort her. I appreciated that those scenes were never saccharine or emotionally manipulative.

I wept through the last hour of the film, touched by the wide range of gorgeous music, beautiful cinematography, heartbreaking suffering, and the challenges Batiste had to overcome to create the symphony. Viewing the live performance of the symphony before a packed house at Carnegie Hall took my breath away. This is a film worth watching.