If I'm trying to slow my roll toward a record number of movies ranked in 2022, there's an easy way to do that: take a break from watching 2022 movies.
So I picked back up Audient Bridesmaids with Ray (2004), having left off after the first entry in the series, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, back in April.
It occurred to me as I was watching that we usually don't go back to watch biopics after the year they were released. Among cinephiles with an omnivorous mentality, biopics are worthy of our attention precisely because they are new, not because they are intrinsically worth watching. Having a good director helps, having a compelling subject helps even more -- but then again, if you are a fan of the person being profiled, you should be seeing it when it first comes out due to eagerness alone. So both the cinephiles who watch everything and the people who love the film's topic are seeing it in the first year. Everyone else may never see it.
Another reason why it's hard to pull off a delayed viewing of a biopic, however, is that biopics may be more inextricably linked to the period in which they were made than any other genre. At one point, every biopic was a hagiography, focusing only on the good parts of the person, either because the film was made by somebody who already had stars in their eyes, or because the filmmaker required the cooperation of the estate of the person in question. Then we realized we needed to see the warts of our heroes in a movie about their lives, if we wanted that movie and ultimately that person to be taken seriously. Now, especially after incisive parodies like Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, we've realized the limitations of the "cradle to the grave" biopic and demand movies that focus on only a small slice of the person's life in the spotlight. Even that is starting to feel a bit hackneyed, though, and the biopic is simply crying out for another reinvention, which explains the truly artsy and unconventional approaches we've seen to the form.
Watching Ray in 2022 feels like taking two steps backward on this evolutionary scale. The wickedest and most parodic parts of Walk Hard seem to be a direct response to a movie like Ray. Walk the Line is the more obvious reference point, given both the similarity of the title and the similarity of Dewey Cox to Johnny Cash, but Ray seems equally responsible for that film's jokes. As I was watching the beginnings of Ray Charles' heroin addiction, all I could think of was the hilarious scene in Walk Hard where Tim Meadows tells Dewey all the reasons he "don't want no part" of the drug in question -- even when it's marijuana and it "isn't habit forming!" And "it makes sex even better!"
And with this context in my head, it wasn't possible to take Ray as seriously as I might have in 2004. Taylor Hackford's film -- and I've always considered that an unfortunate name for a director -- uses every biopic cliché you could dream up, from the montages of show dates and songs climbing charts, to the put-upon wife at home who can't abide by the star's philandering, to the scene of succumbing to the shady handler, to the betrayal of close allies, to the single childhood trauma that appears to explain the artist's entire life. In this case, it was Ray's younger brother drowning in an outdoor bathtub as Ray looked on -- and yes, this is when he still had his sight. At random moments throughout the film he is haunted by visions of the lifeless body in water. Each time he staggers backward dramatically to demonstrate how much this still eats away at his mental well-being.
Because Ray is so beholden to these tired tropes, it seems hard to envision it getting an Oscar nomination for best picture. Of course, without yet having a movie like Walk Hard to identify just how tired those tropes were, we were living in a different time. The thing that certainly elevated the movie was one of the things I liked best about it as well: the performance of Jamie Foxx.
Foxx's success in the role of Ray Charles went a little to his head unfortunately. There was a time afterward when I think he thought he was Ray Charles, showing up on Kanye West records, flashing the million dollar Ray Charles smile, and generally thinking he was the shit. Since we had only just started to realize that the former In Living Color star was, you know, actually a good actor, it seems a shame to acknowledge that this was really Foxx's peak. The now 55-year-old has continued to work throughout, appearing as supervillains, the star of a Tarantino movie and Rico Tubbs. But he never topped Ray, and I've always wondered if being high on his own supply for a while there was a factor.
Still, this is pretty remarkable stuff, this impersonation of Ray Charles. It's also a cliché to say this, but you sometimes forget you are watching Jamie Foxx and just think that's Ray Charles up there on the screen. Foxx had his style at the piano and his personal speaking style down perfectly. It was a deserving best actor win. There are a few moments that I found a bit awkward, but I attributed them to the hack of a director, like forcing Foxx to repeatedly do that "awakening from a nightmare" thing after one of those visions of his dead brother. I'm not sure any actor could pull that off credibly.
I was also surprised to learn just what a "sinner" Charles was. When someone is blind, we tend to think of them as the opposite, as a saint. Charles was not. He was a dope fiend for something like 15 years. He repeatedly cheated on his wife. He was just plain mean sometimes. Ray earns points for showing us all this, and educating me on it.
The last thing I liked about the movie was anything related to the logistics of being blind. For example, when he was starting out, Charles used to ask to be paid in one dollar bills so he could count them himself. If they threw another bill in there by accident it was on them and to his benefit. Of course, we also see that people became frustrated counting out 80 or more one dollar bills. Charles did eventually get people he could trust to count the money, but the movie was a constant reminder of how easy it was, how tempting it was, to potentially abuse that trust and to rip him off. The way he chose what color socks to wear (he had a number sewn into them) and other logistical challenges were always interesting. There's also a heartbreaking scene where as a child, he falls over and calls out for his mother, who is silently watching from the other side of the room -- seeing what he will do to fend for himself and to develop the essential survival skill of memorizing his environment.
The good things mentioned in the last few paragraphs were enough to earn Ray a mildly positive review from me.
This series will continue at some unspecified point in the future with The Prince of Tides in 1991. Yes, that means I've seen every best picture nominee from 1992 to 2003.
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