The Genius of Jamie Foxx
Ray, starring Jamie Foxx, Kerry Washington, Regina King, Clifton Powell, Harry J. Lennix, Curtis Armstrong, and Larenz Tate
One of the primary dangers in making a bio-pic is the tendency to reduce the main character’s motivations to a single incident or experience for the sake of narrative coherence. Billy Bob witnesses his mother being abused so he becomes a champion of women’s rights. Little Amy sees her father’s shame at begging for work to get by and vows to never be poor, amassing a huge fortune in her adult life.
Of course, filmmakers need to draw some conclusions about a person’s motivations—that’s sort of the point, after all—but a good biography film doesn’t simplistically trace every single action in a character’s life back to a single motivation or desire. After all, how many of us can point to one reason why we do the things we do, let alone a half-dozen?
Ray, directed by Taylor Hackford (Proof of Life, An Officer and a Gentleman) and starring Jamie Foxx as the jazz and R&B great Ray Charles, certainly has moments where it falls into this reductionist trap, trying to relate too much of Ray's behavior to a traumatic incident suffered when he was a child. But any hint of over-simplification gets left behind every time Jamie Foxx is on-screen depicting the title character. That’s because beyond being an incredible impersonation of Charles, Foxx’s performance is so complex and layered that he makes you feel as though you’re watching an actual human being up on the screen and not just an actor portraying one. Even as the film's script attempts to pin Charles down, Foxx's portrayal of the man defiantly resists any single label or category.
Building on his fine performance as the reluctant taxi driver starring opposite Tom Cruise in Collateral, Foxx has woven an incredibly rich portrait of an iconic performer that represents some of the best movie acting I've seen in years.
Like many great artists, Charles was an incredibly complicated person—charming, funny, and full of dignity despite his handicap, but also selfish, self-deluding, and at times cruel to those who loved him—and Foxx captures every one of these facets of Charles’s character without a single false note. Although Foxx does not sing in the movie, he does play the piano and his lip-synching to Charles’s recordings is flawless.
The film tells primarily of the middle part of Charles’s life, from the time he first arrived in Seattle as a teenager to play gigs to the time at age 36 when he finally kicked heroin in a rehab center. Along the way, there are flashbacks to his upbringing in rural Florida under a tough-as-nails single mother (Sharon Warren) who taught him to take care of himself after losing his sight to childhood glaucoma when he was seven. The bulk of the story traces Charles’s rise as a performer and the origins of many of his most famous songs, as well as his marriage to Della Bea Robinson (Kerry Washington) and his many extramarital dalliances. Most of these scenes are well-crafted, if occasionally oversimplified as noted above; one quibble I had, however, was that the titles showing where and when different scenes took place were maddeningly inconsistent—sometimes the place and year were noted, sometimes just the place, and sometimes neither.
The movie also loses some momentum towards the end as the filmmakers try to cram in too many details about Charles’s later life, and there’s a bit of unnecessary hagiography at the end depicting Charles as a civil rights pioneer when that was only a small part of what he was about.
While Ray is clearly not a perfect film, it does have as close to a perfect acting performance as you’re going to see this year in Jamie Foxx’s depiction of the musical genius.
Stars: ***1/2
One of the primary dangers in making a bio-pic is the tendency to reduce the main character’s motivations to a single incident or experience for the sake of narrative coherence. Billy Bob witnesses his mother being abused so he becomes a champion of women’s rights. Little Amy sees her father’s shame at begging for work to get by and vows to never be poor, amassing a huge fortune in her adult life.
Of course, filmmakers need to draw some conclusions about a person’s motivations—that’s sort of the point, after all—but a good biography film doesn’t simplistically trace every single action in a character’s life back to a single motivation or desire. After all, how many of us can point to one reason why we do the things we do, let alone a half-dozen?
Ray, directed by Taylor Hackford (Proof of Life, An Officer and a Gentleman) and starring Jamie Foxx as the jazz and R&B great Ray Charles, certainly has moments where it falls into this reductionist trap, trying to relate too much of Ray's behavior to a traumatic incident suffered when he was a child. But any hint of over-simplification gets left behind every time Jamie Foxx is on-screen depicting the title character. That’s because beyond being an incredible impersonation of Charles, Foxx’s performance is so complex and layered that he makes you feel as though you’re watching an actual human being up on the screen and not just an actor portraying one. Even as the film's script attempts to pin Charles down, Foxx's portrayal of the man defiantly resists any single label or category.
Building on his fine performance as the reluctant taxi driver starring opposite Tom Cruise in Collateral, Foxx has woven an incredibly rich portrait of an iconic performer that represents some of the best movie acting I've seen in years.
Like many great artists, Charles was an incredibly complicated person—charming, funny, and full of dignity despite his handicap, but also selfish, self-deluding, and at times cruel to those who loved him—and Foxx captures every one of these facets of Charles’s character without a single false note. Although Foxx does not sing in the movie, he does play the piano and his lip-synching to Charles’s recordings is flawless.
The film tells primarily of the middle part of Charles’s life, from the time he first arrived in Seattle as a teenager to play gigs to the time at age 36 when he finally kicked heroin in a rehab center. Along the way, there are flashbacks to his upbringing in rural Florida under a tough-as-nails single mother (Sharon Warren) who taught him to take care of himself after losing his sight to childhood glaucoma when he was seven. The bulk of the story traces Charles’s rise as a performer and the origins of many of his most famous songs, as well as his marriage to Della Bea Robinson (Kerry Washington) and his many extramarital dalliances. Most of these scenes are well-crafted, if occasionally oversimplified as noted above; one quibble I had, however, was that the titles showing where and when different scenes took place were maddeningly inconsistent—sometimes the place and year were noted, sometimes just the place, and sometimes neither.
The movie also loses some momentum towards the end as the filmmakers try to cram in too many details about Charles’s later life, and there’s a bit of unnecessary hagiography at the end depicting Charles as a civil rights pioneer when that was only a small part of what he was about.
While Ray is clearly not a perfect film, it does have as close to a perfect acting performance as you’re going to see this year in Jamie Foxx’s depiction of the musical genius.
Stars: ***1/2
posted by Captain Nemo at 3:58 PM
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