Q. There have been movies about James Brown, Jimi
Hendrix – a film on Miles Davis in the works. Do these movies make
it difficult to teach their music to a new generation? Are there any
African American writers whose lives should be placed on the big
screen?
I have to say, I’m worried . . . again.
The trailer for Miles
Ahead is beautiful.
Some of the scenes are clearly designed from extant photos of Miles
at work in the studio. We see him leaning over the piano, working
through the composition with Gil Evans. We see the iconic image of
Miles, seated on his stool amidst the many musicians on the sessions,
leading the company towards what was going to turn out to be one of
the most genre defying and form defining performances in the history
of the music. Cheadle manages, at least in the trailer, to use his
own voice in a way that suggests Davis’s hoarse whisper without
tripping into caricature.
Cheadle is a tested and brilliant actor. What we see in
the trailer is inspiring. So why am I worried? Because I’ve seen
those other films, and so many like them.
If all you’d seen of the Hendrix film had been a
trailer, you might have felt good about that one. Andre Benjamin
didn’t seem a bad choice for the lead, despite earlier film
fiascos, despite not knowing how to play a guitar (in a film that
calls upon him to fake it left handed). When word came that the
Hendrix estate wasn’t cooperating, I began to think the script
might not be what I would hope for. My bigger worry in that regard
was that the screenplay was coming from John Ridley.
If you’ve seen 12
Years a Slave, you
might know why I wouldn’t have chosen Ridley for the Hendrix
project. For one thing, too many people forget that there was an
earlier film of 12
Years a Slave,
released in 1984 under the title Solomon
Northup’s Oddyssey.
That earlier film, which aired on public television’s American
Playhouse series, was directed by no less than Gordon Parks. The
script, based on Solomon Northup’s 1853 book, was written by Lou
Potter and Samm-Art Williams. Both films deviate in places from
Northup’s narrative. It would be impossible to be entirely faithful
to such a book in a film of a couple hours duration, and I have never
been one to demand absolute fidelity in an adaptation. On the other
hand, there is poetic license and there is desecration. Think of what
Hollywood did to Faulkner’s Sound
and the Fury on
first attempt. (We have another version of that coming, saints
preserve us.)
Yes, both films alter what Northup had written. But keep
in mind we’re not talking about the adaptation of a novel,. As with
the Miles Davis and Hendrix films, we’re talking about the
adaptation of an historical figure’s life. In Ridley’s retelling
of this masterpiece of autobiography, Northup’s wife is erased from
the great final scene of reunion with his family. This could have
been a tense and dramatic scene simply by following the lead of
Northup’s book, and there seems no reason within the dynamics of
the film for this erasure to have happened. But far worse than the
erasure of Northup’s wife is the insertion of an egregious bit of
sexual suggestion. Early in the film, as Northup has been kidnapped
into slavery and is being transported, Ridley and the director, Steve
McQueen, take it upon themselves to add an element of sexual intimacy
with a stranger that not only never happened, but would seem
surpassingly unlikely within the very situation the film is
depicting. Why is this scene in the movie? It has nothing to do with
depicting the ways in which people in bondage created opportunities
for themselves to have intimacy, family, love, all of which are shown
much more realistically and movingly elsewhere in the film.
There has been a long-standing fixation upon black
sexuality in mainstream film, and the mostly British production of
this American classic continued that daft and deleterious tradition.
As have the preponderance of films about African
American musicians, mixed well with extended scenes of drug taking
and alcohol consumption, etc. Again, I am not suggesting that such
things didn’t happen or that bio pics should pretend they did not.
But I am suggesting that mainstream film has made these things the
centerpiece of their telling of African American music history for
far too long. The recent Queen Latifah flic about Bessie Smith is a
telling instance. Watching that movie, you’d be hard pressed to
know why so many have been so moved by Smith’s music. You seldom
get to hear more than a snippet of a song. Clint Eastwood’s movie
about Charlie Parker, already marred by having such flubs as a
flashback inside of which another person has their own flashback,
gives us a Bird who is really only about dissipation. The Hendrix
movie flunks on just this score. Those of us who saw Hendrix during
his life time hoped for a film that would convey something of his
virtuosity and brilliance. What we got was a film about a guy who
beats women up, crushing their faces with telephones. And of course,
when you make a film about a recent musician, there will still be
people on the scene who know the truth of what happened. In this
case, the very woman depicted getting abused by Hendrix has testified
repeatedly that none of this ever happened. So why is it there?
Given what we know of Miles’s own
histories of drug use and violence towards women, all of which was
detailed in his own autobiography (though there are reasons to
mistrust even some of that representation), can we trust the current
project to give us a Miles, moral blemishes and all, who is really
about the thing that made him worth attending to in the first place.
Will we get, at long last, a movie about an important musical artist
that conveys something of the drama of composition, the excitement of
improvisation, the kind of musical transcendence DuBois describes so
well in many of his writings? (While waiting for the new Miles movie,
you might go back and watch A
Man Called Adam, a
film that centers on a Miles-like character, and that features Cicely
Tyson – The movie has its own problems, but is interesting to see
in light of the approaching release.)
But no, these films have not really caused any problems
for me when I am teaching my students about the music, because they
aren’t about the music, though they cause problems when you try to
talk about the life.
When Motown was making Lady
Sings the Blues, I
was puzzled by their casting Diana Ross in the lead. When I went to
the movie, I spent the first several minutes thinking, “that didn’t
happen – that was somebody else – where is that coming from?”
But then I realized that the way to watch that particular film was to
forget everything you knew about Billie Holiday. To forget that there
had ever been a Billie Holiday, and just try to appreciate the film
as a movie. Still, Motown gave us a Billie Holiday who was a mass of
symptoms. Where was the mastery of voice; where was the triumph of
phrasing; where was the invention of new relationships to melody and
rhythm? Watching Lady
Sings the Blues,
would you really know why Lester Young always wanted to play with
her?
So I will go to the Miles movie,
hoping that Cheadle and company will avoid the usual pitfalls and
really give us a cinematic Miles, the man who changed the face of
music at least three times in one life. Yes, Miles beat Cicely Tyson,
something for which he could never really atone. Yes, Miles fell into
the grip of drugs. But that is not the reason we want to see a film
about Miles; we can watch reruns of The
Wire if that’s
what we’re after.
And so – there should be major movies about DuBois
(hell, there should be four or five movies about DuBois) – about
Hughes, about Hurston, about Wheatley, about Harper (Frances and
Michael!) About Baraka for sure – I wouldn’t be surprised if we
see a Gil Scott Heron film one day. (Please don’t let Common
anywhere near that project!) But I’m not hopeful I’ll live to see
these films, and given the track record to date, I’m not sure I
want to see them.
Will the African American experimental film makers
please step forward!
(By the way, Billy Woodberry is set to premiere his
documentary on Bob Kaufman, a project about which I am considerably
more optimistic. Now there was a cinematic life!)
No comments:
Post a Comment