Through VH-1's "Behind the Music" series, audiences have become familiar with the Rock 'n' Roll Life Trajectory. It usually goes something like this: Kid from hardscrabble background has talent. Plays locally, gets discovered. Cuts record that becomes big hit. Becomes rich and famous. Succumbs to the drug use and multiple lovers/sexual conquests that are in the job description of Entertainment Giant. Triumphs over addiction and enjoys resurgent career. Lives happily ever after. In fact, this story, which seems to be repeated over and over and over again, is indeed the story of the American musical artist, at least those for whom the story doesn't bypass the rehab and happily-ever-after and end with an overdose (see also: The Doors). And as repeated over and over and over again by VH-1 over the past ten years, it's become one of the great film cliches of our time, right up there with the car chase that topples a fruit stand, and the fact that the actress playing the male lead's mother is only two years older than said male lead.. It's therefore a miracle that Taylor Hackford's fifteen-years-in-the-making biopic of Ray Charles, simply titled RAY, is even watchable, let alone engrossing.

Ray Charles has never occupied a place on my own personal "must listen" list. Of course, my formative years were spent drowning in the throes of Beatlemania, and by that time, Charles was deep into what I call his schmaltz period -- ballads backed by a string-dominated orchestra. Not that a nine-year-old was able to appreciate R&B at that point, certainly not when the closest thing to sex on my mind at the time was how cute Paul McCartney was. In more recent years, my view of Ray Charles was forever impacted by his appearance at the 1984 Republican convention which nominated Ronald Reagan for a second term. That Ray Charles appeared on stage to entertain the supporters of a man who had announced his 1980 candidacy in a speech affirming his support for "states' rights" in the very town where civil rights activists Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman had been murdered just sixteen years earlier made him seem no more than a minstrel dancing for his slave masters. To be sure, this is an oversimplification, and I as a white woman am in no position to judge Ray Charles' musical or political decisions. But like B.B. King playing guitar with Lee Atwater at Ronald Reagan's 1980 inaugural, this embrace of cloaked racists was so distasteful that I have been unable to listen to the music of either of these men since.

Watching RAY made me realize what a shame it is that I discovered rock 'n' roll too late to know the early Ray Charles; the soft-spoken, gravel-voiced blind man who added sex to gospel and created a new sound that for the most part, remained uniquely his. And it's the music that makes RAY worth watching, more so than even Jamie Foxx' spot-on impersonation of the real Ray Charles, who did most of the vocals in the music sequence. Director Hackford knows how to make the early sound of Ray Charles sing, showing the kind of nightclubs in which black Americans could escape for an evening the bigotry of the Jim Crow era.

Jamie Foxx is receiving a huge amount of Oscar buzz for this performance, much of it justified, though not for the reasons being cited in most places. I'm skeptical as to whether an impersonation of someone so much in the public consciousness, someone of whom there is so much archival footage easily available, constitutes acting, or if it's simply mimicry. What makes Foxx transcend the kind of 'I do impressions" trap of stand-up comedy is the way he portrays Ray the man as opposed to Ray the artist. Ray Charles became such a beloved figure in American music that it takes a fair amount of audacity to portray him as somewhat of a prick. In RAY, and also in real life, Ray Charles is tyrannical with those surrounding him, perfectly capable of using his blindness to manipulate people at the same time as he was ferociously determined not to be defined by his physical limitations. A blind man would seem to be every less-than-stunning woman's dream, but Ray has his own way of determining which women are good-looking enough to go to bed with.

Foxx is surrounded by a strong supporting cast, all of them giving fine performances that never overshadow Hackford's lead actor, except for the dynamo that is Regina King. Alas, King is reduced here to playing yet another Music Star's Wronged Woman, but she gives it the best the role can handle. Kerry Washington, as Ray's wife Bea, is beautiful but has little to do but be the long-suffering rock star wife. Curtis Armstrong plays Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun in a highly sympathetic way as both mentor and friend, not the cartoon musical exploiter this genre usually requires.

RAY is a great-looking film. The period details -- colors, furnishings, costumes -- are spot on. Hackford understands the stylistic themes necessary for a music biography from this era, and so there are screen-high shots of spinning 45 rpm records, images of Billboard charts, short clips from clubs across the country to demonstrate the progress of a road tour. Less successful from a design point of view are the flashback scenes from Ray's childhood, which at times seem to be dropped in from another movie, perhaps outtakes from The Color Purple. Their inconsistency with the rest of the film is especially jarring because in many ways they are the strongest aspect of the film from the standpoint of character development. Newcomer Sharon Warren impresses as Ray's mother Aretha Robinson, who must recover from her grief at the death of her younger son in a freak accident involving a laundry tub in order to raise another child who is going blind. The way she trains Ray to use his hands and ears to compensate for his eyes is worth a film all by itself. That this uneducated woman was able to take her son as far as she did before sending him off to a school for the blind makes her the real hero of this film.

I'm not convinced that RAY is anything more than a slickly-produced, well-crafted but highly conventional pop music biography. But with Ray Charles having exited the scene earlier this year, it is probably the right time to release a film of which he approved, one that if not exactly honoring his life, pays testament to the complex, flawed artist he was.

-- Jill Cozzi

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