Ray vs What's Love Got To Do With It

I'm a sucker for a good biographical movie. Even if it isn't that good, there's something about recreating events that go behind the scenes of songs or movies I'm a fan of. Even if you're not a fan of Jerry Lee Lewis, it's somewhat of a rush to see Dennis Quaid setting a piano on fire. In a biopic, you want to see the sad, self-destructive, Behind the Music moments, but you want to see the creative, fiery, revelatory moments too. It's fascinating to watch Loretta Lynn break down on stage, but it's cool to see her writing songs on the bus too. Taylor Hackford, the director of Ray, knows this. Ray is filled with moments of Ray Charles behind the piano, figuring stuff out, creating classic songs, being genius. It's also full of scandalous Behind the Music stuff, which I expected. What I didn't expect is that so many of these things happen simultaneously, and that's where Ray distinguishes itself.

Ray Charles was born Ray Charles Robinson, but was encouraged to drop Robinson because Sugar Ray Robinson was said to already be doing the Robinson thing, meaning this was a time when black performers were lucky to be welcomed by the mainstream one at a time, and the less confusion the better. Ray Charles was faced with this sort of racism his entire career, though not always as subtle. Early in his career, Charles was on the Chitlin' Circuit, playing clubs in the South still enforcing Jim Crow policies. (He eventually rebelled against segregation, in one of the movie's highlights.) Ray Charles, of course, was also blind, so the discrimination was doubled. Ray Charles, of course, was a genius, so the discrimination was meaningless.

He seriously was a genius. You know that, right? We throw that around a lot, and it's usually wrong, but Ray Charles was a genius. The guy who cured Polio? Sure. Inventor of the telephone? Absolutely. But, at one point, Ray Charles was recording and had to send his backup singers home because they were drunk. Did they stop the session? No. Instead, Ray used an eight-track recorder, for the first time, and sang all three parts of the female three-part harmony he wanted for his song. All by himself. And he wasn't just blind, he was completely stoned. That's genius.

Ray follows a pretty steady pattern. Ray charms managers/women/audiences, does something of astonishing creativity, gets completely high, disappoints managers or women (never audiences), feels horrible guilt about an accident in his past, and thinks of his mom who sets him straight with her down-home wisdom. The pattern is fairly reliable, but at times, it's a little predictable too. Ray's mom appears over and over, and a few of the moments are truly breathtaking (especially when Ray's mom watches in silence as he falls and calls out for her help. She waits, careful not to make a sound, as Ray helps himself up and goes about memorizing the room so he doesn't fall again.). Other times though, you wonder why she didn't take her worldly wisdom and cash in on the lucrative bumper sticker market. I personally would have bought “Scratch a lie, find a thief!” this year.

The bulk of Ray's achievements, musically, occurred at Atlantic Records, where he was signed by Ahmet Ertegun, whom Ray initially called “Omelet.” Mr. Ertegun was extraordinarily patient and imaginative, and had an ear for music. He encouraged Ray Charles to branch out from the Nat “King” Cole music style he was accustomed to, and into the Gospel/Blues/Ray Charles stuff that became classics. Ertegun is played by Curtis Armstrong, who you might know from Moonlighting or Revenge of the Nerds. He's completely unrecognizable, and, thanks to his great performance here, might never be called Booger again. Ray is full of remarkable supporting performances, most notably from Regina King. There are two other major non-mother females in Ray's life (represented in the movie, anyway. You get the idea he had a standby girlfriend in every town), but neither registers as much as King. Man. King plays Margie Hendricks, the most serious of Ray's other women (he's got a wife and two kids at home), and the most charismatic of his back-up singers, the Raeletts. “Does that mean we have to let Ray?” she asks. King's Margie refuses to be just the other woman, insisting that Ray make time for her in rooms without a bed. She wants to be special in the recording studio as well (her “BAY-BAY!” in The Night Time is the Right Time is legendary), and expects her fair share of money and drugs. She gets all three, and damn near walks away with the movie every time she's on screen.

Jamie Foxx plays Ray Charles. During the opening credits, I forgot he wasn't actually Ray Charles. This is an astounding performance. Usually, in films like this, you get some notion of what the real person was like, and the costumes and songs fill in the blanks. It becomes more mimicry than acting. This is different. Jamie Foxx becomes Ray Charles. It's not just the stage mannerisms, or the vocal inflections. It's the walk and the gestures. But it's not just those either. Jamie Foxx completely embodies the man, showing how many of Ray's physical cues and ticks were actually part of a series of charms and persuasions. Ray Charles was a force. A lesser movie review might take this moment to say that the Force is with Jamie Foxx, but I would never do that to you. Suffice to say, this is one hell of a performance. If the movie it's in ends up being a little much, well that's part of the process, I suppose, and we just have to live with it. Ray is the story of a long, tumultuous life, and that takes time. After all, What'd I Say wasn't written in a day. Oh, wait, it was. Never mind.

Tina Turner's background is remarkably similar to Ray Charles's. She was the grandchild of sharecroppers, and raised by her grandmother when her mother and older sister ran off to St. Louis. The difference is that Tina—then Anna Mae Bullock—was bashful and timid off stage. We see her early, in a country church, singing so much louder than the rest of the choir that she's forced to leave. Years later, in St. Louis, she's in the audience of one Mr. Ike Turner, who as a gimmick, passed the microphone through the audience, inviting girls onstage to sing. Usually the point was that the girls were terrible. The audience could heckle, and Ike could scope out which ladies he wanted to meet after the show. If you've ever seen Anna Mae Bullock perform (I have), you already know that handing her a microphone is no laughing matter. Anna Mae Bullock rocked the house that night, and continued to for decades. What transpired in between is the subject of What's Love Got To Do With It, which, like Ray, is a harrowing look at the depths to which performers are sometimes sinking when the cameras are off. Onstage, Tina was a wild woman. Off stage, her life was one of fear and intimidation at the hands of Ike Turner.

You know the drill: drugs, abuse, rock-n-roll, biceps, wigs. Like Ray, What's Love (Holy jeez that's a cumbersome title. Let's just call it Tina, okay? Ray was originally called Unchain My Heat: The Ray Charles Story. I'd like to think they changed it to save me from carpal tunnel.) finds its groove not in its storytelling, but in it's performances. The editing and pacing is pretty standard stuff; years pass while Tina barrels through “Proud Mary”. But the performances are amazing. The obvious problem is that Ike and Tina Turner are two of the most physically distinct performers who ever took a stage. Wisely, the casting leans toward talent rather than any aesthetic resemblance. It works. It's hard to imagine anyone in the roles of Ike and Tina Turner besides Laurence Fishburne and Angela Bassett. That's high praise, considering Ike and Tina are real people.

Of course, besides their outrageous clothes and horrible relationship, Ike and Tina were known for their elaborate stage show. As in Ray, the songs are performed by the original artists and accurately mimicked by the actors. The film's peak—in terms of emotion, narrative and music—occurs about half way through. Tina is exhausted, sick and suicidal, and doesn't want to go onstage. One threat to her life later, and she's all ready to go, staring down a screaming crowd, with the Ikettes at her side wondering just what the hell is going to happen next. Ike kisses her on the cheek, and the audience eats it up, not knowing what it really means. Angela Bassett takes a deep breath, tears roll down her cheeks, and Tina Turners voice comes out. Angela Bassett is such a bad-ass, it's no wonder they cast Laurence Fishburne as Ike. Who else could be believably threatening opposite Angela Bassett? Their scenes together are phenomenal, at times almost too brutal to watch. Director Brian Gibson staggers his scenes, much like Taylor Hackford, so that the darker moments are tempered by the onstage excitement, making one impossible to watch without thinking of the other.

Ray: A-
What's Love Got to do With it: A-