Ray
In the rash of recent biopics of well known and beloved pop culture celebrities over the past twenty years, this certainly has to be considered one of the best, a celebration of the life and times of one Ray Charles and his influence on music while still not being afraid at various times of portraying him in a unflattering light and even worse, as an enabler who help set others down their own bad path to an untimely demise. Jamie Foxx DEFINITELY deserved his Oscar for the role of Charles, tackling head on the assigned task of bringing this iconic figure to life in such a way that we forget that we’re watching the goofball comedy actor from In Living Color and various other movies and instead become immersed in the real life character whom he is portraying. Many have called this a mere impersonation with Foxx only succeeding at recreating Charles’ speaking style and physical mannerisms, but Foxx actually does some real acting here, giving the character a soulfulness while also giving the audience a real investment to work with, and unlike Phoenix in Walk The Line, making us believe straight up from the first scene on that he has inhabited the one and only legend himself, even getting the chance to perform select songs in his own voice with assistance from Charles (who really did work and consult on this film before his death in 2004 which was also the year of the film’s release) while the rest of the songs were left as they were originally recorded by Charles himself (which was the same strategy utilized by Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone’s movie of The Doors), with the scene where he holds his newborn son, fearful of the possibilities that the child might suffer from the same disabilities as himself being the highlight of his performance. This is perhaps the best capturing of the essence of a real life entertainment figure on film by an actor besides Kilmer or Carrey in Man On The Moon, especially considering the added pressure of knowing that so many people are aware of the person whom you are playing. The story uses an unusual approach to depicting Ray’s childhood (usually the weakest part of these type of films which smart filmmakers generally gloss over) using a segmented style where we get a few minutes of being shown Ray’s interactions with his mother and brother before going straight to Foxx playing him in adulthood while still flashing back at key points during the film to his childhood years, showing how his mother hated working as a sharecropper so much in segregation era Georgia that she often found herself unemployed, how his brother wound up dying in what looked to be a freak drowning accident and of course the bout with illness that resulted in his eyes watering up constantly before becoming blind for the rest of his natural born life. Once we see Foxx as Ray Charles for the first time, he immediately becomes an interesting yet enigmatic figure, possessing the ability to disarm racists by showing a sense of humor and even claiming to have been blinded while storming the beaches at Normandy in order to garner their respect. From there it moves on to his first steady gigs working as a piano player in a jazz band all while being taken advantage of by his bandmates (including Terrence Howard) even as he quickly brings himself to people’s attention by clearly being the most talented member of the group as the others consider him to be almost out of touch and clueless due to his blindness which encourages them to try and screw him over on the money that is earned. From there he escapes the near servitude of that gig to sign on with a rinky dink record label who can only offer him limited exposure before having his contract bought out by Atlantic Records which is also a smaller label but whom also possesses the ability to get his name out there better. Finally he hooks up with ABC Records who have the means and willingness to take him fully to the mainstream and make him one of the biggest music stars in the industry, all while Charles himself would take the daring and risky steps to fuse R&B with gospel (which upset many who thought of it as being sacrilege) and even adding country music to the mix, it ironically being one of his favorite types of music growing up and proving that an African American performer can hold his own in a genre predominantly reserved for white singers. But there was also a darkness in Ray’s rise to fame in the form of the dreaded heroin, something which he was turned onto by his early bandmates and was a major catalyst for much of his career, but even worse than that perhaps was his various dalliances with his female backup singers behind the back of his trusting wife who managed to accept such things as being part of “life on the road” for her husband. After going so far as to even get one pregnant, Charles is eventually forced to fire several of his long time cohorts for allegedly stealing from him and finally enters the hellish world of concentrated rehab from which many junkies never successfully emerge from. This portrayal of the uglier side of Charles’ persona (which also included drug arrests) is commendable considering that Charles himself most likely approved these story elements being included before he passed away, but there is also the much more positive and significant issue of Charles refusing to play a gig in a segregated venue in his home state of Georgia and thus being “banned for life” from performing in that state ever again, a ban that was thankfully lifted in 1979 with a formal public apology and the declaration of his hit song Georgia On My Mind as now being the official state song as well, which in some ways cemented Charles as being considered a hero in the civil rights movement for standing up to white racists who would fawn over him for being famous and talented while in the same breath hatefully talking down to the black fans who had come out to see him. Adding to the quality here is a good number of very cool actors in smaller supporting roles (you can’t beat Warwick Davis as a pot-smoking dwarf), but the biggest surprise in this lot is probably Curtis “Booger” Armstrong as the Atlantic Records executive who signs Ray and nurtures his early talent, at the same time expressing disappointment that Ray has signed with a major label while also being thrilled for him at the incredibly lucrative and historic deal that was made for him to jump ship (albeit being unable to match that offer himself when given the opportunity since it’s noted as being a better deal than even Sinatra has ever gotten). The film also happens to be VERY well-directed by Taylor Hackford, a long time journeyman who keeps a good pace over two and a half hours and not making it feel as if it has a rushed story like Attenborough did with Chaplin, even though it does drag down a bit at times in the second hour. Other issues include the gimmicky inclusion of Quincy Jones as a character in certain scenes (despite being well-played by Larenz Tate), a sanitized script with some dialogue that would be fitting for a VH1 movie of the week (the PG-13 rating definitely takes many of the harsher elements out of the story) and a final scene between Ray and what appears to be the ghosts of his mother and brother that seems rather a bit contrived but it does at least serve an effective purpose. Overall it does all come off as being confident, sure handed filmmaking with a lead performance that probably nobody else could have really pulled off quite as well and for that Foxx (a guy known for making the occasional controversial remark from time to time) should be commended for (like Tom Hanks did) breaking out of the awful “he can only do comedy” stigma (which Bill Murray has tried to do for years without much great success) and stepping up to the next level in playing a man for whom many people were not even aware of the darker side of his life and being willing to bring it to the forefront of what could have been an irritating and sappy puff piece that only focused on his personal and professional successes (with the Georgia boycott segments only taking up about 5 to 10 minutes of actual screen time). The great thing that this film does is it not only gives you a sense of Ray Charles’ importance to pop culture entertainment or the civil rights movement, it also lets us know just how human he really was. I know that the next time I watch him in Blues Brothers or singing America The Beautiful at Wrestlemania 2, I’ll feel a sense that I got to know this man better, and that’s really what a project like this is all about…
8/10