Ray Review
by Mark R. Leeper (markrleeper AT yahoo DOT com)November 17th, 2004
RAY
(a film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: As a biopic RAY follows a time-honored
formula. Jamie Foxx is magnetic as Ray Charles
but does not show us enough inner conflict. The
film is at its best showing the roots of the
character. But the music is fine and is what
will please audiences. Rating: high +2 (-4 to +4)
or 8/10
Bear with me a moment on this one. I watch movies from my exercycle. I recently watched a film recorded off IFC that I had never heard of. It was called TWO FAMILY HOUSE with Michael Rispoli. He plays a lower-middle class Italian-American. Over the course of three exercycle sessions on three different days his character had me chuckling, had me angry, and actually had me crying. While I was pumping away on the exercycle, his performance cut through all the interference and actually brought tears to my eyes. It is going to be a while before I will again think about whether a performance is really good and not compare it to Rispoli in TWO FAMILY HOUSE.
People are talking about Jamie Foxx for Best Actor for his performance in RAY. He smiles like Ray Charles and he swings his head like Ray Charles. With the makeup and glasses he looks like Ray Charles. At the right point in his career he is itchy-fidgety like Ray Charles was. His impression of Ray Charles is pretty darn good. But does he show us the inner man? What about his love for music? How can we tell what he feels about the music? Other people in the film talk about how much Charles loves music. At times the usual Ray Charles smile gets a little broader when he has just finished a nice piece of music. At one point in an argument with his girlfriend he spontaneously creates and bursts forth with an almost complete "Hit the Road, Jack." But none of this actually tells us much of the nature of the man or his ardor for music. How is his character developed? Charles as we see him likes sex and he likes drugs. There is nothing surprising about that. He has waking nightmares from an incident in his childhood. Still at the end of the film Jamie Foxx can truthfully sing "But You Don't Know Me." And really we don't except on a superficial level. In fact we probably get more emotion conveyed by the performance of Tequan Richmond playing the ten-year-old Ray Charles Robinson.
Still, while Foxx does perform the mannerisms it is hard to look at anything else on that screen. He really is magnetic, and that is acting of a sort. It is probably as much as the role allows, since without the use of his eyes to convey his feeling he has to remain something of a cipher. Foxx does as much as the script and conditions allow, so I think that he is good, but it is not really a great performance. He is at his best when he is haunted by memories of his youth or is being honest about how he detests the darkness and how it cuts him off from other people. But it does not add up to an understanding.
The film starts with Ray Charles Robinson leaving home to make a career of music. As he does we have flashbacks to his youth that taken together form a second story line. As an adult he is exploited by nearly everybody he meets, but nearly everybody recognizes that he has real talent. In spite of his blindness he seems to be able to function almost as if he can see. He cleverly gets around many problems of the blind by using his hearing and his memory. He insists that he be paid only in one-dollar bills to avoid the danger of being short-changed. But he gets along and eventually has contracts first with Atlantic Records and then with ABC-Paramount. People may not be impressed by his style but they are impressed by his talent. He refuses to be connected to one kind of music, frequently changing his style. Sometimes the strange combinations actually anger the public. When he mixes R&B lyrics with Gospel-style music he angers an audience that considers it blasphemy, but he quickly shifts gears and moves on to other styles. Meanwhile we frequently flash to his past to see the forces that formed him.
Those of us old enough can take the action of the film and peg it to the actual years. I was in seventh grade when "Hit the Road, Jack" was released. The period is recreated with camerawork that frequently looks a lot like faded 1950s and 1960s home movies. The background world may be at least as interesting as the
biography.
Musical biography films have used this same template since THE JOLSON STORY. They show a lot of good in the person, a little bad, and they pepper the film with the subject's best-loved melodies. Then they show everybody (or everybody who counts) loving or coming to love those melodies. Maybe some people don't so much love the person who created that music, but everybody goes mad for the music itself. That is THE JOLSON STORY, THE BUDDY HOLLY STORY, LA BAMBA, GREAT BALLS OF FIRE, A SONG TO REMEMBER, YOUR CHEATIN' HEART, and many others, including RAY. Taylor Hackford directed as well as co-produced and co-wrote the film. In 1980 he made one of the best films ever about the recording industry, THE IDOLMAKER (a fictionalized biography of Bob Marucci). And one reason it was good is that it didn't follow that formula at all. I am a little disappointed that this second foray into music industry films is less challenging.
It is hard to go wrong with a film that shows Southern discrimination, sex, and drugs, and glues it together with the soulful music of Ray Charles. This is not the most ambitious film around, but it is entertaining. I rate it a high +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 8/10.
Mark R. Leeper
[email protected] Copyright 2004 Mark R. Leeper
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
