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Far too often a Hollywood studio movie “based upon true events” would be better off not having been made. I’m not talking about documentaries, I’m talking about lightly dramatized real events like French Connection, Silkwood or Erin Brockovich. Except the three I mentioned are exceptions because, frankly, the bad ones aren’t worthy remembering. Biographies tend to be a little different though producers seem to overestimate the box office appeal more often than they should.
One good sign for a biography is the participation of the subject but only if she or he is willing to be reasonably honest. Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz is a terrific example; not only does Fosse participate, he wrote and directed a strongly critical examination of his emotional life. Ray isn’t as trippy as that late ’70s masterpiece but Ray Charles was active in the project right up to his death and his son was a producer. Neither felt the need to pull punches and so we get a portrait of a creative genius that includes huge portions of guilt, loneliness, shame and arrogance.
Jamie Fox plays Ray in the performance of his career, perhaps one of the top American movie performances since the turn of the century; if he doesn’t win the Oscar next Sunday night there’s a bigger problem in Hollywood than I thought. I haven’t seen his four competitors and though all are respected actors Fox just too many chops to lose. There are other good actors in this film, Clifton Powell as bus driver, confidant and manager Jeff Powell, Regina King as backup singer (and one of Charles’ many lovers) Margie Hendricks and Bokeem Woodbine as Fathead Newman, a great sax player who was Ray’s first connection to heroin. But Fox is simply all over this movie, completely inhabiting his character, blindness, piano playing, ruthless self-confidence.
Director Taylor Hackford has had a decent career, he made The Idolmaker, a film I consider seriously underrated, and An Officer and a Gentleman early on and then seemed to get lost in the studio system until now. Here he makes a movie, one that never seems to drag or get lost in the minutia of a life jampacked with public events. The only quibble I can make is that he ends the movie in the late ’60s after Charles is busted for bringing drugs back to America in his jacket and goes through detox to finally quit them. True, after that the hits stopped coming but I felt an abruptness that jarred me out of the groove; 30 more years of life surely justifies some kind of coda better than few sentences in voiceover and a photo montage.
One funny thing about Ray is that despite all the music, of which there’s plenty and it’s all good, this never becomes a tribute concert with some biographical sketches gluing things together. We get a complex, complete portrait of an imperfect wonderful human being.
definitely recommended
