Ray

by Rick Curnutte

Richard A. Curnutte, Jr. is the Editor of The Film Journal. He has studied English and Film at Ohio University and The Ohio State University. He is a founding member of the Central Ohio Film Critics Association and a member of the Online Film Critics Society.

I've long been wary of studio-produced biopics. They tend to be overlong, tedious exercises in indulgent hero worship. Even more tiresome are filmed biographies of artists, musicians, etc. They are often laborious in their attempts to present their subject's genius, but unwilling to probe the different faces, or masks, that celebrities tend to wear.

Surprisingly, Taylor Hackford's affecting Ray manages to sidestep nearly all of these roadblocks. Hackford (An Officer and a Gentleman, Bound by Honor, Proof of Life) has never been a director that I admire. I've found his films to be overly manipulative and completely lacking of any kind of nuance or subtlety. Here, against all expectations, he's delivered a gold standard of the artist biopic.

Most of the hype surrounding Ray has been directed at Jamie Foxx's electric performance as Ray Charles, and rightly so. A weaker actor would have merely been content with mimicking Charles' mannerisms: the grinning, the swaying, the bubbly yet gruff voice…Foxx does something heroic here, though, something that truly helps pay tribute to Ray Charles. He plays it all: all the quirks, all the rage, all the frustration, all the insecurity…Ray Charles was an extraordinary, complex man, and Foxx allows all of those facets of the man to seep through.

The supporting cast, though, is equally powerful. The women in his life are portrayed by a series of marvelously talented actresses: his wife (Kerry Washington); his mistress (Aunjanue Ellis); his muse (Regina King). There are moments of quiet and vengeful power in the various relationships between Ray and these three beloved, but misused, women.

Best of all is (Sharon Warren) as Ray's mother. Portrayed solely through expertly crafted flashback sequences, Aretha Robinson (Ray's real last name; Charles was his middle name) is a beacon of strength and determination, in a world that would have Ray resort to being a helpless cripple. Tragedy (the death of his younger brother) and affliction (blindness at a fragile age) strike early in the life of Ray, and his mother, tough to the point of rigidity, insists upon Ray not allowing himself to be a victim. He struggles his whole life to live up to this ideal.

One of Hackford's greatest accomplishment is showing the often ugly sides of Ray. He was quite often an extremely selfish cad, more worried about fulfilling his own desires than relating in a meaningful way to those who care about him. He often buys into a hype that he creates for himself and descends into a destructive addiction to heroin.

Much of this has been done before, but Hackford and Co. have created something above and beyond the average, "He was born, he did this, etc." approach of biographical filmmaking. A less dedicated filmmaker might have settled for showing how Ray overcame blindness to become a musician. But Hackford has captured the true essence of Ray Charles' importance as an artist. Ray Charles revolutionized the music scene with his combination of jazz, soul and gospel music. In the midst of the uproarious Civil Rights Movement, Charles refused to play in segregated auditoriums. He set new (and early) standards for artists securing the rights to the music they create. Yes, he was blind, but as his mother taught him, he never let that render him a cripple. Instead, he had to overcome the prejudices of a culture not prepared for his sexually aggressive posturing, and a music industry ill-prepared for his progressive experimentalism. Ray Charles, an icon his entire life, didn't live to see (no pun intended) Ray realized, but I'd like to believe that he would have been moved by the honest, powerful portrayal of him as a flawed, but brilliant, artist.