Ray

Ray is one of the films of the awards season for all of you who have been asleep for the past few months. I decided to finally watch the film and see what the buzz was all about. Thus I have decided that Ray is a good film. I’m not sure I would put it in the great film category, but it was a straight forward biopic of the life of Ray Charles. This film is rated PG-13 mainly for its depiction of Charles’ drug addiction though even this is treated in a rather bland and non-graphic manner.

What elevates this film about the mediocre is the singular performance of Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles. So I think that all of the kudos and awards for the actor are warranted though the film itself is somewhat bland and lacking in imagination. What Foxx does with the character is hard work and yet he pulls it off. Foxx is limited not only by having to wear sunglasses for most of the film, but he is playing a man who in general had a retiring and restrained manner, not the normal fare for great characters. Where DiCaprio got to play a man with all sorts of nervous twitches and neuroses, Foxx is playing a man who in general kept a private profile working through his music and not a larger than life personality.

Jamie Foxx becomes Ray in a manner that is almost startling. If you happen to get the DVD watch the footage of Charles and Foxx in the studio. There Ray is Ray and Jamie is Jamie. The commentary mentions that they thought that Jamie Foxx wouldn’t want to stay in the studio with Charles for long getting berated on his attempts at listening and repeating Charles’ riffs. Perhaps there are Hollywood prima donnas who don’t have the least understanding of music or are so self-centered they don’t know when they are in the presence of a greatness almost too deep to fathom, luckily Jamie Foxx is not one of them. Those people must not have a musical bone in their bodies because Foxx is a piano player and he was getting a free lesson from one of the greats in the music industry. He would have been a fool to want that to end. Plus as an actor it gave him the opportunity to see the master first hand and study his mannerisms. Apparently it worked. Foxx successfully became the real life character that he portrayed in a way far surpassing Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes or any of the other biopic character depicted and lauded this year.

The film begins with Ray Charles and flashes back a number of times to the difficulties of being the child of a poor black single sharecropping mother. In these somewhat maudlin scenes we see Charles’ mother Aretha Robinson played by Sharon Warren as a struggling mother whose strength gives her son the skills he need to overcome a debilitating handicap and make his mark on the world. Even to the point of sending him away when she has taught him all that she can. Of course there are also a number of water motifs that seem more of a burden to the film than an aid. These refer to an accidental drowning of Ray Charles’ younger brother when they were children. Perhaps this is dwelt on the explain and apologize for Charles’ decades of infidelity and drug abuse though in the film Charles admits to using these crutches to help fill the darkness of his world, not his guilt over past sins. Of course as we all know the young Charles had an innate musical gift and the film moves on to follow the evolution of his career.

The history of Ray Charles is not to be documented here though it is in the film as his music grows and sends him out of the Deep South. Beginning as a Nat King Cole imitator Charles moved to Seattle, Washington to distance himself from his Southern roots. There the first person he meets is an even younger Quincy Jones. Of course Quincy and Charles were good friends but for most of the film Quincy Jones disappears only returning to provide Charles with his conscience later in regards to playing segregated venues in the Deep South. It is well known that Ray Charles, born Ray Robinson had to change his name because of the success of boxer Sugar Ray Robinson and here it is done in a breeze. In fact most of the early parts of Charles’ career seem to breeze by with few references to the struggling and the cheating that the blind musician faced.

Certain themes begin to appear and reappear as Charles discovers himself through music moving from a one man cover band to fusing the music he knew as a child and changing it into the music that we all know and love. First there is the gospel music which Charles takes out of the church and into the bar room to the consternation of many. Then there is Charles’ reinterpretation of country music for a wider audience. Of course the movie must stop at a point, and it does, in the 70’s, but the legacy of Charles goes on as we can see from the reception of his last album Genius Loves Company and its flood of Grammy awards. Jamie Foxx played piano before he came to this role but he really had to brush up not only on his playing, but on his performing, to play the endearing Charles. And the musical moments of the film are magnificent not only because of the quality of the music, but because we really believe that Foxx and his cohorts are producing it. The most impressive of these is when Charles runs out of material and has to improvise a song on stage to fill out the time. Of course being Charles this is no filler as his Raelettes and his band struggle to keep up Charles bangs out Tell Me What I Say.

The other portion of this film revolves around Charles’ life, his many loves and the way they pull at him from music to women to drugs. Charles’ life has always been lived in the public eye and so it is no surprise that his romances and his drug use were both well canvassed here. The film hints at Charles’ excessive womanizing but it chooses to focus on three of his larger than life loves. Of course being a musician all three are singers. First there is Della Bea a singer he meets when things are taking off for him. Eventually Ray strays taking up with his backup singer Mary Ann. These relationships with his lead singers are of course the cinematic equivalent of showing a string of one night stands and short term relationships in a more memorable and more palatable way. Later, with the arrival of The Raelettes Ray becomes involved with Margie Hendricks played with energy by Regina King, of Jerry Maguire fame. Here the women are all women of music and Ray’s passion for women is linked to his passion for music. Whether Charles’ womanizing can be seen in such an altruistic light is far less certain as the film fails to mention that Charles had not one, but eleven illegitimate children by different women.

The film also traces Charles’ battle with drugs and how he nearly lost everything he had worked for. Charles began using heroine in the late 40s while part of the Maxim Trio. In 1952 Ray Charles joined Atlantic Records and started to have success with a string of R&B hits. It was in the late 50s that Charles introduced The Raelettes, a trio of women who backed up his vocal arrangements. In 1959 Charles moved to ABC-Paramount Records to expand away from his R&B base. Here he began using full orchestras and reached out to a larger pop audience.

Ray Charles was also active in the civil rights movement in the South in the 60s. But except for his refusal to play in a segregated club in Augusta Georgia which led to a lawsuit and his being banned from playing any venue in the state of Georgia none of his activities are depicted. Of course as with any biopic there are many omissions, this is just one where the film feels it needed to mention it and then leaves the threads hanging.

Overall Ray was an enjoyable film filled with miraculous music that told a tale about a musician. Ray Charles was not a giant among men but he did drastically affect the direction of popular music for future generations. The film is at times melodramatic and it glosses over some of the messier portions of Charles’ life, for instance the film stops short of the 1977 divorce in which the long suffering Della Bea finally left Charles. But overall the film leaves a hopeful feeling, not just that all of the difficulties Charles faced were worth the price of his music, but also hope that Jamie Foxx is a new rising star in Hollywood who can command large salaries and A roles for many years to come.