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Ray: (Craig Armstrong) Released shortly after the death
of the music icon Ray Charles in 2004,
Ray is a biographical telling
of the performer's life from 1930 to 1966. For younger audiences familiar
with Charles' glowingly positive aura in the final 40 years of his career,
there might not be as much knowledge about the very troubled childhood and
early career that Charles was forced to navigate through to achieve control
over his own addictions. It is safe to say that the life of Ray Charles is
an ultimate study in victory of tragedy, although Charles certainly had
enough tragedy to fill an entire film. In the movie
Ray, we view the
horrific, emotionally paralyzing death of Charles' brother as Ray watches;
it is one of the few lasting memories of sight once Charles goes blind later
in his childhood. Upon moving to Seattle to ignite his performing career,
his addictions to pot and heroine were twenty years in the conquering, and
he never really was able to resist the plethora of women who threw
themselves at him. The film's concentration is on Charles' journey to the
light at the end of the tunnel, and his actual reaching of that point.
Summarizing the most positive and far less dramatic modern era would likely
have done an injustice in its lack of depth compared to the first half of
the film. It's important to understand the points above because the score by
composer Craig Armstrong is no happy tale either. While his score for
Love Actually the previous year was a delightfully chipper
experience, Armstrong's career has been punctuated by scores with generally
somber and more dramatic tones.
From
The Bone Collector to
The Quiet
American, a consistently withdrawn, melancholy tone is often to be heard
in Armstrong's work. He is certainly best known for his coordination and
additional score for the sensation
Moulin Rouge in 2001, and for
collectors of the original score from that film, much of the spirituality in
Ray is derived from Satine's theme. The same daunting journey of the
soul is coincidentally shared by Ray Charles and the Satine character from
Moulin Rouge, so a reprise of Satine's lonely, choral atmosphere is
strangely appropriate. Structurally very similar, the two themes differ only
in their slight melody variation and the addition of a gospel voice for a
connection between the traditional gospel choirs and voices inherent in
Charles' home state of Georgia. As per usual, the piano is not only a
central instrument for Charles, but for Armstrong as well. Its performances
of Della's Theme in two key cues maintain the same dramatically slow and
heavy tone, but insert a slightly old-time jazz swing to its scenes. These
connections that Armstrong makes between the orchestral elements of the
score and the gospel and jazz so notable in Charles' career is surprisingly
subtle. It can perhaps be said that with so many of Charles' songs (and
those were original Charles' performances, with no insult to Jamie Foxx's
superior acting job) stealing the audiences' attention in the picture,
Armstrong needed to very heavily restrain and weigh down his score to bring
those audiences back to the troubled realities of Charles' life. Thus, many
of the very short, dramatic underscore cues contain the same droning
electronic ambience of
The Bone Collector.
The most interesting cues in
Ray, however, are the
three dream sequence cues (during which Charles' dreams of making it big)
scored with the kind of deep rock and jazz flavour you would expect Charles
to create for his own personal underscore. The three cues are all different
in instrumentation and rhythm, but their stark contrast to the realities of
the rest of the score make them very vivid in comparison. The second dream
sequence ("Dreams of Ray II"), with an outstanding combination of hip piano,
bass rhythms, and gospel voice are a highlight of the score. After a
"Redemption" cue that exhibits the same overdue positive tone heard in the
soul-departure scene at the end of
Moulin Rouge, Armstrong gives us
one last dream-like gospel/rock sequence over the end credits. The album for
the score is separate from all of the song-tribute albums advertised heavily
near the release date of the film. Both the death of Charles and the film's
release have opened the floodgates on a seemingly endless promotional push
for sales of the song soundtrack and other affiliated, secondary album
collections you see in strictly television advertisements. As for
Armstrong's score-only album, the product does contain significant quotes
from the film (as many as a dozen at the beginning of cues), but they exist
over less important underscore material, and every lengthy cue of
significance is untouched by the dialogue. Overall, the score is a difficult
listen, for it embodies none of the shiny spirit that modern listeners think
of when Ray Charles comes to mind. But in doing his job, Armstrong succeeds
very well at balancing those high points with the darker half that he
musically embodies with great elegance and reverence in his score.
****
| Bias Check: | For Craig Armstrong reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating
is 3.75 (in 8 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.55
(in 42,490 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert includes a note from Craig Armstrong about the score and film.
