preview

Analysis Of The Film 'Ray Charles'

Decent Essays
Movie Review Extra credit Essay

For this greatly appreciated extra credit opportunity given to us, I decided to do a critical analysis on the film Ray (2004) about the life of Ray Charles. The director of this film, Taylor Hackford, has done a fantastic job unfolding real life story of experiences that Ray Charles had, while using a classical narrative structure. The film Ray was such a great tribute to one of the most influential pioneers of jazz music who was known as the father of soul during the 1940’s to the 1950’s. Jamie Foxx was the actor who played the role as Ray Charles in this Universal Pictures film that was released in theatres in the year 2004. The plot to this award winning film was to capture the hard life struggles that helped
…show more content…
Musically, this film helped portray just how talented Ray Charles was, with the help of trained classical pianist and gifted singer, actor Jamie Foxx. Jamie Foxx was able to portray Ray’s cool style of song while representing the historical time when fusion of swing, bop, R&B, gospel, and rock were developed in the jazz scene.The film Ray provides an unflinching portrait of Ray Charles’ musical genius while overcoming drug addiction and transforming into a beloved performer. A few songs that I recognized in this film are “I Got a Women”, “Georgia on My Mind”, and “Hit the Road Jack”. All in all, Jamie Foxx played such an inspiring role capturing both aspects of music and real life struggles that Ray Charles is known for. Since Ray Charles was a popular and known jazz artist in the 1940’s - 1960’s, he would have been around for both the bebop and post bop eras, which was also around the same time as the Civil Right Movement. The film captured the realization that race was an issue during Ray Charles’s life and that his innovation of fusing gospel style of music was a revitalized sense of black pride. Overall, Jamie Foxx’s performance was nothing of amazing and Taylor Hackford’s film was a great representation to Ray
Get Access