See "Ray" to hear Ray.

Rating: 6/10 (21 December 2004)

Much had been said about "Ray," the story of legendary musician Ray Charles, before I finally saw it. In a year of Hollywood swill helped only by the occasional indie pique, "Ray" seemed to be the first major release with a real positive buzz. After watching it however, I felt as if I had seen nothing more than a formulated product of the "biopic" genre.
Nevertheless, "Ray" succeeds as a whole. But why? True, the eponymous performance of Jamie Foxx is even better than all the hype promotes. The long-time comic actor, with a spot on replication of Charles' handicapped mannerisms, mixed with an original approximation of what he must have been like as a young man before limelight, has secured himself an Oscar nomination--if not a win. Foxx's Ray beats lively as the heart of the film.
As much as Foxx deserves all his praise, little has been said about the supporting cast, which triumphs with originality. Nancy Klopper, the film's casting director, has looked outside the box and found actors that we never would have never imagined in their roles, but now find it hard to imagine anyone else. The best of these choices is unarguably Curtis Armstrong ("Booger" from the "Revenge of the Nerds" series) as Atlantic record chief Ahmet Ertegun. Also with Atlantic are Rick Gomez ("Band of Brothers") as a recording tech, and Richard Schicff ("The West Wing") as Ray's first record producer, Jerry Wexler. These actors, along with co-screenwriter/director Taylor Hackford and co-screenwriter James L. White, break the stereotype of record producers as bloodsuckers. I challenge you to watch the scene where Ahmet gives Ray an impromptu rendition of "The Mess Around," and not fall in love with him.
The acting soars with creativity, but it's in the directing that "Ray" sinks back to business as usual. Although cinematographer Pawell Edelman marinates Ray's life with three distinct-yet-similar bleached out twangs for each segment--earth tones in his central Florida childhood, smoky jazz-club shadows for his struggling start, and twinkling, vivid colors for his Hollywood days in the lap of luxury (all with a high contrast to represent the daemons of his life)--the subjects he paints are all too familiar "high price of fame" plot points: Drug addiction, infidelity, and inflated egos parade around as if they are breaking new ground, but are merely walking a pre-blazed path with a somewhat original stride. Another cliché, the "rise to power/on the road" montage, various newspaper headlines superimposed atop a highway map of the USA, is done rather poorly with some cheesy special effects, and gives me speculation that this part of the film may have been rushed.
Also rushed feels the ending, where the filmmakers attempted to sum up the last third of Charles' life with a few juvenile sentences like "Ray continued to promote civil rights." This written epilogue does the film more harm than good. It seems as if Hackford (who gave us such a wonderfully ambiguous ending in "The Devils Advocate") and editor Paul Hirsch did not trust the audience enough to accept a film that didn't wrap itself up into a neat little package. As the final scene of the film concludes a thread regarding Charles' banishment from Georgia, a thread long since abandoned by the filmmakers and the audience, we feel Hackford's unwanted pat on the back telling us everything will be fine, and expect the film to end with "...and he lived happily ever after."
So, I ask again, "What makes Ray so good?" The answer is simple: the music. Foxx takes care of the visual mannerisms of Ray's singing, while the man himself supplies the vocals--care of some skilled mixing on the part of an extended team of sound technicians (too many to credit individually.) Admittedly, I had never had much exposure to Charles' music, yet five minutes could not pass in "Ray" before I found myself tapping my toes to "Mess Around," "Georgia," or "Hit the Road, Jack."
To say the best part of a film is its songs might give one the impression that it's a waste of time. This is not the case with "Ray." The music alone is worth the price of admission, and more than makes up for any flaws in the film proper. If Charles himself is the heart of "Ray," the music is the soul.