A strange look into the life of a truly great man

Rating: 9/10 (24 July 2005)

Ray Charles had been working in showbusiness so hard and so long before he seemed to retire in the late 1990s that few people, even today, have not heard of the man. His name is synonymous with many things, including a campaign to get people to have regular visits with the optometrist (a popular poster in optometrist offices began with the headline "Ray Charles should not be blind"). Throughout his life, he projected the image of a man who should be loved, in spite of some very serious character flaws. Children of the era I grew up in knew him mainly as an eccentric musician who, in spite of being as blind as a bat, was more full of life than many people who were in full possession of all their senses. Ray as a film tries to uphold that image that many of us have of the man, but it also digs deeper to produce the story of a man who lived with many demons, and thus was not necessarily a saint. Some would call it blasphemy to show Ray Charles as a womanising drug addict, but in doing so, the film goes to its glory.
The film covers the period from when Ray Charles began what would eventfully become an illustrious career as a musician to the time he kicked a heroin habit. A few details outside of this period are added in the form of flashbacks, usually to explain some of the more peculiar details of his character. For example, when we are told that Ray never used a cane or a guide dog, we get a flashback of his mother, played with an obvious enthusiasm by Sharon Warren, teaching him how to pay more attention to his surroundings, using the audio cues to guide him. The scenes with a young Ray, played by C.J. Sanders, slowly going blind from glaucoma, are almost enough to bring tears to the eyes. In playing the adult Ray, Jamie Foxx wore eye prosthetics that really left him blind during much of the principal photography. A small detail that might seem, but this kind of dedication to one's art is admirable, and it shows throughout the film.
The film is a study in the two addictions that dominated Ray Charles' life. Early on in the film, the aforementioned mother makes him promise that he will not live like a cripple, as she more or less puts it. Physically, he keeps his promise, but it is the emotional side where he falls down, and this becomes obvious as his womanising ways add up to more sticky situations than most of us will have if we live five lifetimes. But it is the heroin addiction that really bookends the film, and it is no coincidence that the film mainly covers the years in which this addiction had a hold of him. Towards the end of the film, as the Ray on film is entering rehabilitation in order to avoid prison, or so the film has it, we get one of the best "you broke your promise" scenes I've seen on film in years. From this point, we go to the scene with Georgia rescinding its ban against Ray Charles performing there, and the film succeeds in what most biopics of this nature fail at. Depicting a triumph over adversity without being sappy. Kerry Washington's line says it all: you cannot feel sorry for someone that you respect.
I admit it, I am a sucker for stories that depict a human being overcoming adversity. What makes Ray so compelling is that the man in question was very real, and the adversity he overcame was so great. In this day, where governments are imposing more tax upon us than medieval Kings imposed upon serfs, it is scarcely imaginable that there will be others like him anytime soon. Indeed, some disabilities that seriously impair lives can remain undiagnosed for decades, leaving us with stark reminders that for all the social changes that have taken place since the time depicted here, we are still no further forward. Perhaps life is meant to be a struggle, and Ray Charles understood this better than any of us. For 150 minutes, Jamie Foxx does not just play Ray Charles. For all practical purposes, he is Ray Charles for that short span of time. In turn, the film highlights a good reason why governments are now trying to socially engineer us away from music. Music has the power to unite people, to turn the poorest among us into the richest (and I do not mean in monetary terms). Just as Ray Charles exemplified this fact in his lifetime, so too does Ray the film.
The only flaw I found in the film was that the actors portraying Ray's supporting musicians were somewhat flat, and the film seemed to die in the last fifteen minutes before Ray's triumph over heroin addiction. For these reasons, I gave the film a nine out of ten. It is not the best film I have ever seen, but it is a fitting tribute to a truly indomitable spirit. It deserves to be seen at least once.