Ray
Matinee with Snacks
To say that Jamie Foxx plays Ray Charles is to shrink his performance to a mimicry. Ray Charles has some pretty distinct mannerisms, sure, and he's can be as familiar to all of us as a beloved grandparent, but this is more than just a great act of mimicry. Foxx takes Charles' manner, his personality, his flaws, his shrewdness, he takes it all, a smorgasbord of a person, and makes a sumptuous buffet. You constantly forget you are watching Foxx; it is as if they actually managed to turn back the clock to his youth. The insanely rich and detailed production design doesn't hurt, either.
This film pulls no punches of vanity or reverence for the blues-gospel king. It is gratifying to know that Mr. Charles himself was screened the film and enjoyed it greatly. He's a man whose god was music and who filtered God's music through his morally ambiguous (at best) life and made it something special, to which generations have connected. Music is what Ray Charles is all about, and the music that he made, the impact that he made, despite all the obstacles (self-imposed or not), stands the test of time. Any pain he might have felt or caused was what made that music, and we have to take the good with the bad to get anything so special.
I could go on about Ray Charles' genius for business, for feeling the music, and for living life as independently and fiercely as he did. The movie does a much better job doing that; I am going to focus on what an amazing job Jamie Foxx did in this role. You may not realize it, but a lot of what an actor does is done with their eyes. Paul Giamatti, Haley Joel Osment, Jodie Foster, Laura Linney - watch them. Their eyes speak volumes. It's hard enough with all your tools to hand. As Ray, Foxx had appliances on his eyes to resemble them being closed and most scenes also sunglasses even to block the nuance of his facial expressions. Some of this adds to Charles' mystique, of course, but the fact that Foxx could carry so much across with such physical limitations put on him as a sighted actor is truly inspiring.
I am reminded of a fellow In Living Color alum whose biopic of a complex, difficult to love genius garnered him great critical praise but no real street cred; of course I am referring to Jim Carrey playing Andy Kaufman. Foxx and Carrey came into our pop culture sensibilities being nakedly ridiculous and funny; for us to trust them with the life stories of these interesting pioneers in their field seems insane. Yet they both were fabulous. I know Foxx will be recognized come Oscar time, as Carrey has not been. Foxx had the added strain of playing a man who (at the time of shooting) was still alive, and doing the piano work, some of the singing, and the loss of his eye expressions. It's a fantastic performance, and the music selections they choose to follow his rises and falls is a great spread of his work.
I don't mean to detract from any of the other performances in the film - the women who play his mother (Sharon Warren) and his wife (Kerry Washington) and his major mistress (Regina King) are all singularly talented and deserve recognition. But this review is here to say, "Go see it for Foxx. Stay for the whole film."
-- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ These reviews (c) 2004 Karina Montgomery. Please feel free to forward but credit the reviewer in the text. Thanks. You can check out previous reviews at: http://www.cinerina.com and http://ofcs.rottentomatoes.com - the Online Film Critics Society http://www.hsbr.net/reviews/karina/listing.hsbr - Hollywood Stock Exchange Brokerage Resource
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