Content Starts Here
Ray film review
RAY
Running time: 152 mins
Starring: Jamie Foxx, Kerry Washington, Regina King, Clifton Powell, Curtis Armstrong, Harry Lennix
Ray is a frank if unremarkable look at the turbulent early years of the pioneering soul singer Ray Charles. What elevates the film above mediocrity is the bravura performance of Jamie Foxx in the title role. Foxx not only looks uncannily like the late Charles, but as a classically trained pianist, he lends the film a tangible authenticity as he plays along while lip syncing to Charles' original recordings.
The most damning feature of Ray, or Ray: The Drug Years as it should more accurately be dubbed, is that having monitored his life from his childhood through to international success, the film essentially dismisses the last 40 years of his life with a cursory montage. The film doesn't skirt Charles' darker side, rather it puts much of its emphasis on his womanizing and drug dependency, but by choosing to effectively end the film at the point when Charles finally kicks his heroin habit, it is in danger of implying that the creative and influential period of his life ended at the same time he got clean.
At more than two and a half hours, it is not as though director Taylor Hackford didn't allow himself the time to cover the eventful 73 years of Charles' life. Inevitably it would be impossible to include everything, but Hackford and screenwriter James L. White could certainly have been more effective in their use of time. Ray is too often guilty of labouring a point and although by the end it had given a dutiful appreciation of his life and achievements, it's hard to say the film provided any real keen insight into the mind of Ray Charles.
At the film's heart is Charles' sublime music. Watching the evolution of such classics as 'I Gotta Woman', 'What I'd Say' and 'Georgia On My Mind' is to see why Charles is so deserving of the label 'Genius'. Ray does a good job of showing Charles' musical odyssey, his pivotal connection with Atlantic Records boss Ahmet Ertegun, and his inspired melding of gospel with rhythm and blues to create soul. With Foxx becoming the embodiment of Charles, the musical scenes are the most absorbing.
Ray takes a fairly orthodox path as it navigates Charles' life. It begins with the teenage singer heading out on his professional career, encountering the young Quincy Jones, playing with the Lowell Fulsom band and his introduction to women and drugs. At various points it flashes back to the critical moments in his childhood: the death of his younger brother and losing his sight at seven. These scenes emphasise the strong influence of his mother (Sharon Warren) who imposed on him the need to stand up for himself. As a result, Charles was quick to remind people, "I might be blind, but I'm not stupid."
It deals with his marriage to Della Bea (Kerry Washington), his role of absent father and his many infidelities, most notably his affairs with two of his backing singers. On a more positive note the film stresses his courageous stand against racial segregation.
The story of a poor blind boy becoming one of the most successful and inspiring musical figures of the last century would be amazing enough were it fiction, that it is true meant Hackford had only to let events and the music do the work. For the most part he succeeds and when he fails, he's fortunate enough to have Jamie Foxx.
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