One of the best biopics I've ever seen

Rating: 9/10 (16 October 2005)

The problem with most movie biographies is that they come with the built-in assumption that just because a person accomplished something great, his or her life must automatically be worthy of a film. But famous people are human beings just like the rest of us, and there's no reason to think their lives progressed like a story, or even contained anything interesting in them other than what they accomplished. That's why so many of these films are dry and boring: they're too much like life, not enough like a story. This was a problem that plagued 2004's "The Aviator," which was well-acted and contained some exhilarating scenes, but lacked a focal point through which to present Howard Hughes' life. The film would show one thing in his life happen, then another, then another, then another, without much of a unifying theme.
What makes "Ray" such a wonderful film is how far it deviates from that sterile approach. As I watched the film, it occurred to me that even if I had no idea who Ray Charles was, I would still enjoy the film. Charles is the sort of person who invites the adage that if he'd never existed someone would have had to invent him. What's most fascinating about him is how he never allowed his blindness to get in his way. He was an irresistible force, a man so tough he could make other men cry without raising his voice. His shrewdness was developed in part because so many people tried to take advantage of him early in his career. But the movie also suggests that his mother, who was an effective parent precisely because she refused to coddle him, trained him to take care of himself and never to let himself become a cripple.
His unique personality is presented in full glory, with all its strengths and all its flaws. He was a chronic womanizer and drug user who worked hard at his music but shirked his domestic responsibilities partly because he loved life so much. The movie at times suggests that he turned to drugs out of depression at his brother's death. Of course, drug use has long been commonplace among musicians. It fits their lifestyle, and it certainly fit Charles, who was the epitome of a "wine, women, and song" kind of guy. When one of the characters describes heroin as "better than sex," Ray disagrees, but then it's not in his nature to pass up what he considers a great pleasure, whether it be sex, music, or drugs.
Of course, I do know who Ray Charles was. I know the enormous contribution he made to music by pioneering a style that blended jazz, R&B, gospel, and rock, influencing a generation of musicians. The way his music is presented in this film makes it an improvement over "What's Love Got to Do with It." While that was also a fine movie, I could never get past the fact that Angela Bassett didn't look or sound anything like Tina Turner. I was constantly distracted whenever she got on stage and Turner's lip-synching took over, and especially when the real Tina Turner appeared during the credits.
"Ray" doesn't have this problem. Jamie Foxx's portrayal of Charles is absolutely convincing in every way. He captures the man's whole public persona, his looks and attitude, while also creating a human being who's believable on his own terms. From what I understand, Foxx played the piano for the musical sequences but the singing is taken from recordings of Charles. However they did it, the effect is seamless. Except for one fantasy sequence toward the end in which we see Foxx's eyes, I never once doubted that the man I was looking at and hearing was Ray Charles. The illusion swept me away. But this is no mere technical accomplishment: if not for Foxx's amazing performance and the movie's compelling story, I would not have been so entranced.
In its two-and-half-hour length, the movie never once strays from its central focus of Ray's irrepressible personality and how it led to his great accomplishments as well as to his great mistakes. While the film's format stays mostly within the boundaries of the genre's conventions, a couple of scenes in which Ray hallucinates about his brother's corpse seem influenced by horror films, and I was not surprised to learn that the director is Taylor Hackford, who also directed "The Devil's Advocate." Scenes like these have the potential to become distracting, but they work nicely here, as a counterpoint to the rest of the movie's realism.
I must confess that I have not read enough about Ray Charles' life to judge the film's accuracy. I have to doubt a few of the scenes, however, that suggest Charles had an almost psychic ability to tell whether a woman was good-looking or not. Supposedly, he would hold their arm, presumably to determine whether they were fat or skinny. Of course, all his lovers end up being knockouts, whereas a woman we see him reject is a hatchet-face. I suppose this is part of the Hollywood myth equating thinness with prettiness, but in a movie this extraordinary, I can forgive a little improbable humor.