December 2, 2004

The Genius of Ray Charles

Ray (Universal Pictures; Taylor Hackford, Director; 2 hours 33 minutes)

"Exhilarating!" "Electrifying!" "Mesmerizing!" the display ads proclaim. "Ray" is all of this, and more. At once joyful and heartbreaking, "Ray" tells the Ray Charles story without the sugar coating of a typical biopic, revealing Ray's struggle with heroin, his many infidelities on the road, his business decisions that occasionally put money ahead of friendship, and his inattentiveness as a father. Yet it is told with a subtle air almost of apology, as though Charles (who worked very closely with the filmmakers) wanted to acknowledge those he had hurt along the way. According to producer Stuart Benjamin, who worked for 15 years to get funding for the film, Charles supported the project enthusiastically,
reading the drafts of the script and calling old friends to ask them to talk openly with Hackford and screenwriter Jimmy White. The result is not a puff piece but a well-rounded story with a ring of truth.

The story pays tribute to Ray's mother, Aretha, a young woman who refused to coddle her son when he lost his sight, probably to glaucoma (although I wonder if those eye drops did more harm than good..) "Don't you be a cripple," she urged him as she sent him away to a school for the blind when he was only seven. It credits Ray's realistic and longsuffering wife, Della Bea, who said of his drugs and his women, "Just keep it on the road. Don't be bringing it into our home." It also demonstrates his painful, and successful, determination to overcome his heroin addiction without the
use of additional drugs.

Ultimately, though, "Ray" is about the music, glorious music that keeps the audience tapping and nodding throughout the movie. Twenty five songs in 2 ½ hours-you do the math. It's a concert with a storyline. And what a concert it is! Almost every aspect of the story is told in the context of one of his songs, and all of the recordings are performed by Ray Charles himself, including some concert tracks that were in Charles's private collection, never before released. As we see the many innovations Charles brought to music, the crossovers between gospel and pop, the creation of country and soul, the development of new technologies, we come to understand why Frank Sinatra said of him, "Ray Charles is the only genius in our business."

Although it is wisely Ray Charles's voice we hear (an earlier musical biography this year, "De-Lovely," was ruined by the decision to let Kevin Kline sing Cole Porter's songs), Jamie Foxx is not merely lip synching. A pianist since the age of 3, Foxx is an accomplished musician who went to college on a piano scholarship. He spent several hours at side-by-side pianos with Ray Charles, learning the nuances of Charles's unique style. Consequently, Hackford did not have to resort to the usual tricks of strategically placing a microphone in front of the actor's mouth or cutting from a stand-in's hands to the actor's face. Foxx performs each number, playing and singing, his fingers on exactly the right keys with exactly the right expression, allowing Hackford to take long luxurious shots of concert scenes that would not have been possible with a lesser actor. Far from merely impersonating the celebrity he portrays, Foxx seems to actually be Ray Charles. It's uncanny; they really don't look alike,
yet Foxx seems to look exactly like him.

Foxx is having a great year. This summer, as a taxi driver in the ovie"Collateral," Jamie Foxx stole the show from Tom Cruise (not such a difficult feat, in my opinion) with kudos from all the critics. He has come a long way since his start as a regular on "In Living Color," a comedy ensemble created by the Wayans Brothers in 1990 and often described as "Saturday Night Live" without the music and the news and with more than one obligatory black. (In fact, Jim Carrey got his start there as the"obligatory white.") Ironically, the Wayans brothers are still playing a version of that lightweight tv show, with their latest movie, "White Chicks," rushing quickly from theaters to video stores with a dismal 13%
approval rating on rottentomatoes (one of my favorite movie rating services). Meanwhile, Foxx has honed his craft to become a legitimately praiseworthy actor.

The rest of the cast are equally as gifted, especially the hauntingly beautiful Sharon Wareren as his mother and Regina King as Margie Hendricks, one of the original Raelettes and one of Charles's "road wives." I don't much care about the Oscars any more because they have become so commercialized, but at least now I have a film to root for this year.

(Additional information gleaned from Ray, a Newmarket Pictorial Moviebook.)

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