Taylor Hackford took 15 years to make Ray, and it was worth the wait. Hackford waited long enough for Jamie Foxx to audition to play Ray Charles. When Hackford found out Jamie was the music director at his church and had played the piano since he was three, Hackford said, "Oh my God!" It was too perfect. And "perfect" is the word that comes to mind when you watch Jamie Foxx play Ray Charles.
Ray Charles himself trained Jamie how to play his songs with soul. Jamie worked hard to learn this style, and his hard work was rewarded: Ray gave Jamie, and the film, his blessing. Ray Charles died in 2004, the year the film was released.
There's a lot to praise about this film. What I really liked, however, was the portrayal of several storylines that illuminate truths of invisible universe. Truths like
1. Heroin will cripple you. When Ray first started using heroin, he owned heroin. After only a short time, though, heroin owned him. The film's portrayal of Ray's withdrawal from heroin is particularly well directed.
2. Adultery has consequences. Ray's marriage to his beloved Bee (played by Kerry Washington) was damaged and the intimacy weakened because of Ray's affairs with other women.
3. Christians can come off as very judgmental. The film portrays an incident from Ray's career when two bible-thumping Christians, presumably a husband and a wife, storm one of his concerts. They accuse him of corrupting the Lord's music (gospel music) with sexual lyrics and demand that he stop playing. When they've finished, Ray asked the crowd to say "Amen" if they want him to keep playing. The crowd resounds, "Amen!"
4. Redemption is not only possible, it is the way God works in this fallen world. Although his mother warned him not to let his blindness make him into a perpetual victim ("a cripple," his mother calls it), Ray had become a cripple in another way. But, at the end of the film, God finally gives Ray light--the light that Ray has been asking God for since God let him go blind at the age of nine--with a vision of his deceased mother. In this vision, Ray has his sight back (a symbolic detail not to be missed); and in it, Ray's mother helps him see how his heroin addiction has crippled him. Ray promises her he won't be crippled by heroin anymore--this is the turning point that leads Ray to check into St. Matthew's rehabilitation center. And though the process is brutal, Ray becomes free from that cruel slavemaster, heroin. Ray lived in this freedom for the rest of his life.
There are many other plotlines in this movie that, upon analysis, reveal life truths and lessons. For example, Ray's betrayal of his faithful friend Jeff Brown, and Jeff's consequential betrayal of Ray; Ray's amazing chutzpah that enables his rise to stardom, including helping him negotiate a better record deal than Sinatra's; and Ray's courage to admit to a young man protesting one of Ray's segregated concerts in Georgia, "You're right," which leads Ray to call off the concert. The Georgia protest is a storyline in itself with a redemptive finish in the Georgia congress.
I loved Ray. Even more, I love Ray Charles after watching this film! His story will continue to inspire for generations to come.
