Three stars. Rated R, for relentless profanity, nudity, drug use and flashes of violence
By Derrick Bang
Following an astonishing prolific
decade of studio work — with 32 (!) albums released on Prestige, Blue Note and
Columbia during the 1950s — Miles Davis hit mainstream acclaim with 1959’s now-legendary
Kind of Blue, followed in quick
succession by Sketches of Spain and Someday My Prince Will Come, the latter
inspired by his wife Frances, who was pictured on the LP cover.
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| Don Cheadle's performance as Miles Davis is so spot-on that it's eerie, down to the smallest details. Alas, the film that surrounds this superb acting isn't nearly as satisfying. |
Those forever remained the go-to
albums for many of Davis’ most enthusiastic fans, much to the jazz
trumpeter/composer’s ongoing annoyance. He hated looking back, and he
absolutely hated being “defined” by his 1950s/early ’60s sound; God forbid that
one should even pigeonhole his work by calling it “jazz.”
“Jazz is an Uncle Tom word,” he
famously said, during a December 1969 Rolling
Stone interview. “It’s a white folks word.” When pressed, he insisted that
rock and jazz both deserved to be termed “social music.”
Like most truly inquisitive
artists, Davis thrived on exploring and challenging music’s very essence and
form. His output during the latter 1960s and early ’70s became increasingly
outré, unmelodic and challenging for even the most patient listener: wild,
harsh, flamboyant, unrestrained — granted, always technically proficient —
dissonant and cacophonous.
As if he were trying to be provocative, and daring
people to dislike the result.
The same can be said of Don
Cheadle’s aggressively weird “cinematic reflection” on Davis’ life and career
... or, at least, some portions thereof. This project obviously is a labor of
love for Cheadle, who directed, stars, co-produced and co-wrote the script (the
latter credit shared with Steven Baigelman, Stephen J. Rivele and Christopher
Wilkinson).
The result is, by turns,
celebratory, random and maddening: as gleefully bizarre and uncompromising as
much of Davis’ latter-day music. To be sure, the film is anchored by Cheadle’s
flat-out astonishing portrayal of Davis: less an acting challenge and far more
some sort of full-immersion experience, as if the actor somehow figured out a
way to “wear” Davis, like a suit of clothes.
From the raspy voice to the smug,
condescending attitude and flashes of hot-tempered anger; from the often clumsy
gait that seemed so unusual, contrasted with the always loving embrace with
which Davis handled his horn ... it’s positively spooky.
Whether Cheadle’s riveting
performance is sufficient compensation for the bizarre narrative style, though
... that’ll be up to individual viewers.
Davis surprised the world with a
lengthy “retirement” from 1975 through ’79, during which time he essentially
became a hermit who rarely left his Upper West Side New York apartment.
Cheadle’s film begins with Davis’ cautious re-emergence, an event marked by a
fancy studio interview with an off-camera questioner — we recognize Ewan
McGregor’s voice — whose approach does not find favor with his subject.
“If you gotta tell a story,”
Davis grouses, in that loud, harsh whisper, “come with some attitude.”
Okay, fine, the other guy says,
capitulating. How would you tell it?
Cheadle favors us with Davis’
dead-man stare, which holds for a long moment, until he raises the trumpet. And
then...
...and then...
And then it’s Alice through the
looking-glass, and we’re lost in Wonderland, doing our best to make sense of
what comes next.
Things seem ordinary enough at
first, as if a recent flashback: Davis shambles through his clutter-laden home,
putters with a tape deck while listening to the radio, snatches up the phone
and gets a direct line to the DJ who just played something from Kind of Blue and had the temerity to extol
it.
A knock on the door: an
unannounced Rolling Stone journalist
— McGregor, as Dave Brill — as disheveled as Davis, seeking an exclusive
interview. Davis isn’t interested; he’s much more concerned about getting his
next fat check from Columbia, in order to maintain his isolated, coke-fueled
lifestyle. (Columbia Records did, in fact, put Davis on a “special retainer”
during his nearly six years of isolation.)
But the gravy train is about to
stop; the folks at Columbia are tired of waiting for the “new album” Davis
claims to have been working on ... and, indeed, Brill sees the jazz giant
carefully place a huge tape reel in a locked drawer. So, then it’s off to
Columbia, Brill following like a dutiful puppy, where Davis’ angry financial
demands are witnessed with amusement by smarmy music rep Harper Hamilton
(Michael Stuhlbarg), who is chaperoning “the next great young horn player”
(Keith Stanfield).
Then — blink! — guns are drawn, shots are fired, cocaine drifts into small
snow banks, and suddenly everybody is after the aforementioned tape: a crazed,
cacophonous LSD trip laced with all manner of oddballs, and feeling very much
like the weird journeys into dementia recalled from Into the Night, After Hours
and Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.
At the same time, Cheadle (as
director and co-writer) intercuts this burlesque core narrative with glimpses
of Davis’ younger self: before the wild hair and contemptuous ’tude, back when
a club gig meant showing up in a suit and tie. Back when Davis still was
willing to face his audience, while performing, as opposed to always turning
his back and playing solely for his fellow musicians.
The tone in these sequences is
straight biography: Davis meets dancer Frances Taylor (the radiant Emayatzy
Corinealdi); they fall in love; they get married. We get these seminal events
in brief bursts — almost but not quite montages — that are, nonetheless,
sufficient to depict the developing relationship. These are, by far, the film’s
best and strongest moments; Cheadle and Corinealdi work well together, and we
know that things are destined to get unpleasant.
Indeed, Frances’ subsequent
decisions — the choices she makes, to appease Miles — are increasingly heartbreaking.
Corinealdi makes us grieve for this poor woman who, ultimately, cannot do the
impossible.
As for the rest ... well, it’s an
experience. Stuhlbarg exudes quietly creepy menace as the sort of amoral shark
who’d have been right at home alongside Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis, back in
1957’s Sweet Smell of Success.
Hamilton feels mobbed up, his threats issued with the calm possessed by the
truly powerful.
Stanfield is appropriately
twitchy as Hamilton’s (supposedly) talented but (meanwhile) junkie protégé: a
kid who probably won’t live long enough to fulfill expectations.
McGregor ... is hard to fathom.
Brill is a scruffy caricature of a journalist, much the way Stuhlbarg is a
stereotyped wise guy. McGregor — much too old for the part, by the way — makes
the guy somewhat sympathetic, at times, but the opportunistic Brill nonetheless
remains difficult to like or admire. Or understand, for that matter.
The film score is amazing, of
course: wonderful dollops of classic Davis — notably “So What” and “Solea” —
blended with later charts and some vibrant jazz underscore work by Robert
Glasper. (At times, when the story gets particularly outlandish, it might be
more satisfying to shut your eyes and simply listen.)
Cheadle has delivered a wild
ride: no doubt about that. While those who appreciate jazz in all its intricacies
and complexities — particularly Miles Davis’ jazz — may delight in Cheadle’s
audacious and, at times, quite clever “cinema riffs,” the whole doesn’t live up
to the sum of its occasionally brilliant parts.
We’ve entered a phase of
aggressively unusual and nonlinear movie storytelling, and the Oscar success of
Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman
is likely to make things, ah, challenging, for awhile. I applaud Cheadle’s
inventive ambition, but while his film likely would have found favor with Davis
himself, it’ll be a tough sell for everybody else.
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