Ray

It can be frustrating watching a film about an interesting subject only to discover that it is mired in genre clichés. Ray is just such a film. Admittedly, I am not the biggest Ray Charles fan, but I do enjoy the few songs of his I do know, and I appreciate his talent and ability to overcome being blind and not have it be a handicap. His story is one that is ripe for the plucking, too, and there is a lot of great material there to make for an interesting film. The problem is, we’ve seen it before, and we’ll see it again, including the following year’s Walk the Line, a very similar narrative about Johnny Cash. 

When you set out to make a film such as this, you need to be mindful that if your subject has a very common rise to fame, then you need to be looking for a unique take on that subject rather than simply feeding into those clichés. The aforementioned Walk the Line, a film I also like, suffers the same fate for the exact same reason. John C. Reilly would go on to lampoon this trope in his tongue-in-cheek film Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, a film that works because it exploits those clichés, self-aware of how obvious they have become. 

Ray is riddled with these tropes. We get a traumatic backstory, a rise to fame, the understanding wife back home, drug addiction, and infidelity. Every one of these beats is hit along the way as the film celebrates the music of a Rhythm and Blues legend. How well this film works for you will probably depend heavily on whether you enjoy his music because it’s not going to make you like the man on his own terms. Ray Charles is portrayed as a selfish man who wanted to have it all: money, fame, drugs, a family back home, and all the side chicks he could handle while out on the road. He jeopardizes everything for his music and his long-standing heroin addiction. And though the film ends with him getting off the drugs, it doesn’t touch on his divorce, nor his continual cheating that lasted for much of the rest of his life. The film ignores the divorce, as it does his first wife, ending the film in 1979 with his wife at his side, a full two years after they had actually divorced. 

The big thing, the main thing to go see this movie for, is Jamie Foxx. Jamie had been around for a few years by this time and had made a handful of dramatic appearances, most notably as Willie Beamen in Any Given Sunday. But he was still seen primarily for his comedic performances, especially his television work on his self-titled sitcom, The Jamie Foxx Show and on In Living Color. 

He simply embodies Ray Charles. Ray Charles is one of those personalities that we all have seen somewhere, whether it is during one of his many live performances or his appearance in films such as The Blues Brothers. He has a spirit, a personality, that is unique and Jamie Foxx manages to convey that on screen. This is not just his mannerisms, either, but his charisma and his personality, too. In the spring of 1999, my wife and I saw him on stage in Las Vegas. The feelings we experienced that day are replicated in the live performances on screen. Jamie Foxx is that good. He would subsequently receive an Oscar for this performance, well deserved. It is truly uncanny watching him in this. The actor disappears and we believe we are seeing Ray Charles.

One part of the performance that was not Jamie Foxx, though, was the singing. He did a few of the early songs but none of the more famous tunes Ray sang once his career started to rise. It was initially expected that a body double would have to be used to play the piano, only for Foxx to reveal that he had gone to college on a classical piano scholarship. Foxx did, however, insist on using prosthetics to cover his eyes, effectively making him blind whenever he was filming. 

There are times in this movie where historical events are presented as facts when they never actually happened. There is dramatic license, and then there are flat-out falsifications. Dramatic license is understandable in a biopic because it is not a documentary. But inventing major plot points goes beyond dramatic license. A prime example of this is when Ray chooses not to perform for a segregated crowd in Georgia. The film tells us that he is then banned from performing in Georgia again, something that is eventually lifted in a big ceremony in 1979 when the state elects the song Georgia on My Mindas the state song. The reality is that he was never banned from performing in Georgia, and therefore, no such ceremony occurred to lift that ban.  This is manufactured drama for the sake of drama and feels like an insult to his legacy. There are more than enough real stories about Ray that falling back on a fake one seems disingenuous. 

I wanted to like this movie a lot more than I ultimately did. The music is wonderful, and the acting is even better. But the story is generic, and it takes far too many liberties with the character of Ray and the real events in his life. This is one of those movies that is worth watching for Jamie Foxx; the man has never been this good again (though he has one more iconic performance I will be reviewing in a few more weeks). Ray Charles lived to read a copy of the script (delivered to him in Braille) but passed away before the film was released. The end credits list his birth and death dates, mere months before release. Some may feel like this was a fitting memorial for such a famous musician; I just wish I was one of those. It’s not a bad film, per se, but it definitely left me wanting. 

Academy Award Nominations: 

Best Picture: Taylor Hackford, Stuart Benjamin, and Howard Baldwin

Best Director: Taylor Hackford

Best Actor in a Leading Role: Jamie Foxx (won)

Best Sound Mixing: Scott Millan, Greg Orloff, Bob Beemer, and Steve Cantamessa (won)

Best Costume Design: Sharen Davis

Best Film Editing: Paul Hirsch

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Release Date: October 29, 2004

Running Time: 152 minutes

Rated PG-13

Starring: Jamie Foxx, Kerry Washington, Clifton Powell, Harry Lennix, Terrence Howard, Larenz Tate, Richard Schiff, and Regina King

Directed by: Taylor Hackford