Not a sour note in ode to Davis
|||MILES AHEAD
DIRECTOR: Don Cheadle
CAST: Don Cheadle, Ewan McGregor, Emayatzy Corinealdi, Keith Stanfield, Michael Stuhlbarg, Austin Lyon
CLASSIFICATION: 16 LVD
RUNNING TIME: 100 minutes
RATING: 4 stars (out of 5)
Theresa Smith
AS FREE-FLOWING and non-linear as any Miles Davis solo, this film is more an impression of what the musician was like than a historic hagiography. It doesn’t paint Davis in a very flattering light, but it does show us the chaos of his life and how he made sense of the world through music.
Loaded with attitude, the film embodies a conversation Davis (Cheadle) and reporter Dave Brill (McGregor) have as they prepare to do the interview the freelance journalist has been angling for throughout the entire film: “If you are going to tell a story, come with attitude,” says Davis.
“You’re the artist, how would you say it,” asks Brill, to which Davis lifts his trumpet and blows a sustained, sublime note.
The film plays around with chronology, rhythm and a very loose script to create an image of Davis by contrasting the woolly-haired, limping, angry man in the late ’70s with his early ’70s-focused, band leader self.
It starts with Brill and Davis talking in a studio, then shifts to a night-time crazy car- chase scene, flits back to the studio where the first conversation happens and then it is off to Davis’s home where he is listening to a radio station playing his iconic So What, with the radio dj expressing stunned amazement when the musician calls in to say: “Stop talking crap about me and play Solea instead.”
What follows is just as breathless, dense and surreal as the preceding paragraph.
In an effort to score an interview, Brill follows Davis around as the musician tries to protect a tape of his latest work from his recording company. A simple enough premise but when embodied by a hard-drinking, coke- snorting, lonely artist who struggles to connect with people when he doesn’t have a trumpet in his hands, it becomes a syncopated, chaotic, beautiful mess which makes sense only when coupled with this specific score. Context is a mere matter of conjecture as the story erratically jumps back and forth but like his music, you have to listen to the bits between the notes – so too with this film you have to fill in the factual blanks with the emotional cues.
What you end up with is a mixture of pity, revulsion and admiration because the character Cheadle creates is a potty-mouthed, musical genius who embodied the idea that you need to destroy in order to create. His musical genius lay in his uncanny ability to deconstruct and reconstruct, but how that translated to the rest of his life was that he destroyed it. Cheadle convinces whenever he lifts the trumpet to his mouth – stay for the credit sequence – sensitively balancing the swagger and restlessness.
We see how his relationship with beautiful dancer Frances (Corinealdy) goes from a passion-filled affair to a ugly mess of drugs, Davis cheating on her and domestic abuse.
Fans will recognise specific people Davis worked with and particular key moments, but this is less about ticking off “and then and then and then” boxes and more about exploring the demons the musician grappled with even as his talent drove him, rather than gently inspired him, to create music.
Creativity is exciting and infectious and enriching, but it can also be, as this film shows you, painful.
If you liked Bird or Lust for Life, you will like this.
