Ray (2004)

Director: Taylor Hackford
Universal

Reviewed by Popcorn - 4/14/05

This is the last in the sequence of reviews of 2004 Academy Award nominees.  While Million Dollar Baby moved me deeply, Ray has the added dimension of being a big film with big film technical values… not to mention magical music.  Most biopics fail to move me at some level, because the chronicle of a great man or a great woman doesn't reach the level of universals.  I.e. doesn't provide a model of behavior for humankind in general.

Ray rises to the universal level, presenting the quintessential artist-genius as hero, conquering handicaps.

The movie begins with Ray Charles Robinson's childhood in rural central Florida, where he is raised with a brother by a single mom.  His mother, Aretha, shows an iron will that her sons will make something of themselves and not have to put up with being put down.  Tragedy strikes twice in his early life with his brother drowning in a freak accident and blindness—many believe it was glaucoma—overtaking him at the age of seven.

In addition to his blindness, Ray had continuing nightmares stemming from feeling responsible for his brother's death.  These factor into his later troubles with heroin addiction, but the movie wisely refuses to dwell on the drug issue.  Instead, the story proceeds in the rhythm of his music and songs: his meteoric rise starting in Seattle following WW2, his loves and his lays, the business, his unique sound.

He shortened his name to Ray Charles vs. Ray Robinson to avoid confusion with the boxer, Sugar Ray Robinson.  I love the way the writers show us his core personality by almost standalone vignettes so incredibly acted by Jamie Foxx—Roger Ebert writes, "Foxx so accurately reflects my own images and memories of Charles that I abandoned thoughts of how much 'like' Charles he was and just accepted him as Charles, and got on with the story."

Such as:

• Standing at a bus stop with his first ticket out of Florida, Ray Charles dissembles to the racist bus driver on how he lost his sight in battle at Normandy Beach.
• On the road after his Seattle days, he makes a point of being paid in singles, i.e. individual dollar bills.  (He's been taken before with would-be $10s and $20s being $1s.)  This economically shows his reality of being blind without having to describe it.
• The courtship scenes with Della Bea (Kerry Washington), whom he marries and prizes above all, are poignantly funny.  The strongwilled backup singer, Margie Hendricks (Regina King), he keeps company with on the road catalyzes his talent.
• The ecstasy and the agony of the heroin life are conveyed free of propaganda.  We see how it drives the intensity of his unique musical presence and we see the physical toll, as well as the toll taken by police-state prohibition tactics.
• Upon hearing the argument from a protester at a whites-only event in the old South, Ray decides to break his contract and not perform.  This is used to demonstrate Ray's alliance with the civil rights cause.  It's also behind the authorities' selective arrest of Charles for drug use.

Nor does the movie minimize the music.  The incredible music.  Here are some tunes from his country music "phase," alone: "I Can't Stop Loving You," "You Don't Know Me," and "Crying Time."  As I'm watching the movie, especially as one who lived in the era and heard the main songs in real time, I find myself constantly saying, "Wow, I forgot how wonderful it was to be alive at that time to listen to that tune."

The writers, producers, and director have given us a work worthy of the extraordinary man who inspired it.  Everything fits seamlessly.  Jamie Foxx deserves his Oscar, and from my seat, Ray is the most Oscar-worthy movie in a field of stellar nominees of 2004.

Popcorn

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