Cheadle’s chops jazz up Davis biopic
Musician biopics are possibly the most actor-reliant of films. So much depends on matching the charisma of our musical icons that most of them rely on little else.
Don Cheadle’s vanity project Miles Davis biopic, Miles Ahead — besides playing the man himself, Cheadle wrote and directed the film — at least has the courtesy of trying to match some of the restlessness and verve of its subject. More an interpretation of Davis’s life than a telling of it, it follows the jazz man during one of his rare creative lacunas: the late 1970s, where the blow is more likely to be in powdered form than on a trumpet, and Miles is faced with being more a legend than an artist.
The imagination comes in what happens: This is basically a chase movie, with Miles and a shady reporter (Ewan McGregor) eager to write his comeback story racing to recover the tape of his latest album, lest that dastardly record company tries to release it.
Pock-marked with car chases and gunfights, it seems to suggest Davis is so passionate about his artistic vision that he’ll do anything to keep it pure. The conceit is overstated and not really a sharp analogy, but Cheadle the director and screenwriter is at least sharp enough to keep the camera kinetic and give us enough breath to meditate with him on a master.
When he isn’t rushing around New York looking for drugs or shady promoters, Miles is a broken man, twisted by regret at lost love and haunted by his future self, the only Miles Davis anyone seems to see. His reluctance to release new music seems to stem from his inability to live up to his past self, whether that means he’s a man who might truly love somebody else or just a musician whose next album was eagerly anticipated, as opposed to a dutiful bow on a retirement tour.
Everywhere he goes, he’s reminded of what he was — an idea captured too succinctly in the recurring image of the album Someday My Prince Will Come, which features his wife Frances on the cover. And now he can’t figure out what he is now, other than a guy who wants to be left alone.
Purpose comes in the form of getting the tapes back after a young musician lifts them during a party. Davis is spurred on by the journalist, who is eager to see some of the old Miles in the new.
It’s all a little too pat, though, reducing Davis, rather than expanding on him.
Credit where it’s due, though. Cheadle keeps him crackling with charisma.