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| RAY (2004) |
| 02.13.05 (4:26 pm) [edit] |
STARRING: Jamie Foxx, Kerry Washington, Regina King, Curtis Armstrong, Sharon Warren
DIRECTOR: Taylor Hackford
WRITING CREDITS: James L. White
DISTRIBUTOR: Universal Pictures (US 2004)
RATED: PG-13 for depiction of drug addiction, sexuality and some thematic elements
How sympathetic can the topic of a bad biopic be?
Ray Charles presents the limit case. Charles grew up dirt-poor as the son of a single mother laundress in the Deep South. Among the last things on Earth he saw, Charles watched his baby brother die in a senseless accident. Blind from early youth, Charles painstakingly crafted a musical legend in a world determined to cheat, demean, and undermine him. Given the inherent emotional tug of the material, the Academy Award nomination for Best Picture comes as no surprise. The music is great, Jamie Foxx inhabits the character of Charles, and the film's dramatic arc comes at last to a happy conclusion for the recently deceased and much-missed showman.
Still and all, what a sluggish bore of a movie. Why do man of genius biopics always insist on droning on about the personal struggles of the artists? From watching RAY, one would think that his story was mainly about heroin, then polygamy, then traumas of origin, and, somewhere in the bottom of the pile, marginally about music.
In fact, the structure of RAY betrays its two main messages. The messenger-characters of the film deny over and over again that Ray Charles should be pitied because of his blindness, but the film showers Ray with understanding and empathy to the point where one expects to see the director making a cameo to help Ray strap on for a fix. Secondly, those who understand Ray best speechify to him that music is the most important thing in his life. But we're treated to precious little insight into his actual composition process. What do his musical influences sound like? What dead ends did he pursue in his original work? Something as simple as -- what habits did he have when writing? Did he ever have writer's block?
The man passes, love him as we might. Life is short, art is long. RAY gives us mostly the short end of the stick.
LIC
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Welcome to Mixed Reviews Single Servings. Here you'll find short reviews of current and past movies for people too busy to read a full review.
You can find full-length reviews of present and past films, from Hollywood releases to independent films to "hidden treasures" that haven't been released yet, at our main site, Mixed Reviews. Please browse our archive for links to reviews of films dating back to 1998.
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