NYFF ’15: Miles Ahead

Miles Davis was like Picasso. He had highly influential, readily identifiable periods. Each of Davis’s stylistic shifts usually heralded the birth of a new trend in jazz. However, in the late 1970s, Davis was in the midst of his “silent” period. Withdrawing from public performances and recordings, his reclusive hedonistic lifestyle further fueled fans’ obsession with the Miles Davis mystique. An aspiring music writer tries to snag the interview everyone wanted, but gets pulled head-first into the chaos of the Miles Davis experience in Don Cheadle’s Miles Ahead (clip here), which premiered as the closing night selection of the 53^rd New York Film Festival.

If you can’t tell it is the late 1970s from Davis’s wardrobe, you’re never going to figure it out. Earlier in the decade, Davis released some of his most commercial recordings ever with Bitches Brew and Jack Johnson (heard prominently early on), but everyone still prefers his classic stuff, like Kind of Blue and Sketches of Spain. After several years away from the studio, Davis has finally cut a new session, but he refuses to relinquish the tapes. This rather irks Columbia Records, since they paid for it, but considering how much they make off his back catalog, Davis does not feel he owes them anything.

Due in part to his heavy cocaine use, as well as his self-imposed state of isolation, Davis might be losing his grip on reality. He frequently experiences visions from his earlier life, particularly his marriage to first wife Frances Taylor (that’s her on the cover of Someday My Prince Will Come). Yet, his erratic behavior will make him even more formidable when an unscrupulous agent steals the master he has been so closely guarding. Pressing would-be journalist Dave Braden into his service, Davis lights out after the ambiguously mobbed up talent manager—and Hell follows after them.

As an actor, Cheadle channels the mannerisms, voice, and most importantly the attitude of Davis so well, it is truly eerie. In contrast to the secluded years of the 1970s, Davis was true media presence in the 1980s, even appearing in an episode of Miami Vice and a commercial for Honda Scooters. We know exactly what he looked and sounded like around this time—and Cheadle nails it completely.

As a director and screenwriter, Cheadle’s choices will be more controversial, but they are mostly defensible. Everyone can probably agree the traditional short pants to long teeth bio-picture approach really does not fit a Miles Davis. Sort of like Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs, Cheadle uses the flashback structure to hopscotch back and forth in order to get at the essence of the musician’s life. It works for the most part, but the central fictional narrative following madcap scramble for his mystery master tape is pretty bogus.

Frankly, it is impressive how well Cheadle and his co-screenwriters understand his music, yet it is somewhat frustrating how much they cover through cinematic shorthand. Most Miles fans well understand what a substantial role producer Teo Macero played in shaping his fusion sessions, but he only gets name-checked. Likewise, you just have to know Cannonball Addderley and John Coltrane are the saxophone players on the sextet sessions, but Davis’ relationship with Trane was one of the most significant associations of his career. Still, Cheadle earns major credit for a scene showing Davis' close collaboration with arranger Gil Evans (nicely played by Jeffrey Grover) on the Miles Ahead sessions. (To this day, many fans do not realize the extent of the uncredited work Evans did on innumerable Miles Davis albums as an unclassifiable musical fixer.)

The choice of Robert Glasper to adapt the classic Davis music to fit within the film’s dramatic framework and to compose original tribute-ish themes with Cheadle was also inspired. Not only is Glasper comfortable with modal, fusionistic, and bop-based forms of jazz, he also has an ear open to contemporary forms of music. He is precisely the sort of musician Davis would be working with today if he were still with us.

Cheadle’s work as Davis is genuinely award-caliber and Emayatzy Corinealdi gives a strong, forceful performance as Taylor (one wonders what Cicely Tyson will make of the film, but you can’t please everyone). However, Ewan McGregor is basically dead weight as Braden, while Michael Stulhbarg makes an embarrassingly lame villain as the exploitative agent (is there any other kind?).

Regardless, Cheadle’s go-for-broke ethos is definitely cool and he shows unerring good judgment with respects to music placement. You will get the essence of Davis from the film, which is saying something. It might take fans a bit of time to chew on what is and is not incorporated into the film (no Charlie Parker, but the scandalous police assault outside the Vanguard is dramatized, with surprising restraint), but it is worth wrestling with. Recommended with largely good feelings, Miles Ahead is scheduled to open in spring 2016, following its closing night screenings at the 2015 NYFF.

Brendan Gleeson is the Guard

Sergeant Gerry Boyle is too corrupt to be corrupted. The Archie Bunker of the Irish Garda (with a dash of Hunter S. Thompson), his flaws are manifest, but misunderestimate him at your own peril in writer-director John Michael McDonagh’s The Guard (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

When Boyle and his new partner discover a dead body connected to a trio of rogue drug traffickers, the curmudgeonly copper takes it in stride. He is certainly not about to cancel his regularly scheduled assignation with two up-scale call girls imported from Dublin. However, when Boyle’s partner turns up missing, he starts to take matters more seriously.

In contrast, the FBI is quite concerned about the ruthless (but eccentric) gang, dispatching Special Agent Wendell Everett to take charge of the case. Needless to say, the straight-laced agency man clashes with the decidedly unimpressed Boyle. Unfortunately for Everett, Boyle is not only the smartest cop on the force, he is also the only one not on the take.

McDonagh’s razor-sharp dialogue is a joy to hear, particularly coming from Brendan Gleeson as the jowly and jaundiced Boyle. Gleefully subverting the jolly Irish cop stereotype, his Boyle comfortably occupies the hazy border between hero and anti-hero. Likewise, Don Cheadle is appropriately intense, but still cool, as the strictly business Everett. Their standoffish relationship and pointed banter is well beyond the stuff of standard buddy-cop fare.

Completing the package, Guard also boasts a full battery of colorfully distinctive villains. Liam Cunningham, recognizable as the commanding Pres. Richard Tate in BBC America’s Outcasts, chews the scenery with relish as Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, a homicidal self-styled gentleman of literary refinement. Though much more understated, Mark Strong’s turn as Clive Cornell, the gangster cynically disaffected with illicit drug trade and the crooked cops who abet it, gives the film a real cutting edge.

Cleverly written from start to finish, The Guard is the most quotable film in years, right up there with the original Fletch. Boyle may very well be a character Gleeson was born to play. In fact, he more-or-less reprises the role in Noreen a very funny short written and directed by his son, Domhnall Gleeson, that also screened at Tribeca this year. Indeed, his richly comedic work as Boyle ought to make him a household name in America as audiences see and recommend The Guard. It’s that good. Thoroughly entertaining, it opens this Friday (7/29) in New York at the Angelika Film Center.

Darfur Now Opens

When a film is made on an important topic in need of greater attention, but fails in its execution, it is particularly disappointing. Such is the case with Theodore Braun’s documentary Darfur Now opening in New York today.

As detailed in a previous post DN actually whitewashes the genocide of Christians and Animists in the 1990’s, basically giving the regime a free pass for crimes committed during “a period of civil war.” The Islamist nature of the Sudanese government is also glossed over and its history of sheltering Bin Laden and Al Qaeda is evidently not considered relevant. What we see all too much of is Hollywood celebrity worship run amok, which really undercuts the film’s integrity.

DN follows six individuals identified for doing something to “make a difference” in Darfur. Only two are actually Sudanese. Ahmed Mohammed Akakar is a former pillar of his Darfur village, now trying to hold his community together in a refuge camp. Hejewa Adam is a grieving mother who joined the rebels in response to the murder of her son. Their stories are clearly compelling, but are the least developed in the film.

Conversely, the face shown most often is that of student-activist Adam Sterling, spearheading a campaign to divest California’s pension funds from companies doing business with Sudan. It is a good cause, which frankly ought to be expanded to all countries which sponsor terrorism. However, the often over-wrought Sterling’s dramatics border on embarrassing. It is interesting to see him get a political education though. When meeting with the legislative director of the California NAACP, Sterling finds himself grilled as to whether his palm cards were printed in a union shop, revealing the true priorities of his supposed ally.

Another subject seen too frequently is co-producer Don Cheadle. DN seems to have a new age philosophy of empowerment through activism, and Cheadle is its chief proponent. We see him at book signings earnestly urging people to “get involved.” At times it seems DN views Darfur as important not as a human tragedy, but primarily as a venue for activism, which leaves one increasingly uncomfortable. As for scenes of Cheadle writing speeches for rallies, they would be better left to Hollywood gossip shows, rather than a serious documentary.

Perhaps the most interesting characters are those involved with multi-national organizations. Pablo Recalde runs convoys of food into Darfur for the World Food Program, the importance of which is unquestionable. Also note-worthy is the work of Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor for crimes in Darfur. It is fascinating to see him build a case for genocide, and his idealistic belief in justice is laudable, but ultimately he is undone by the nature of the ICC. Despite handing down two provisional indictments after a year and a half of investigating, Ocampo has yet to see any of the perpetrators in the ICC’s docket.

Though well intentioned, ultimately DN is distracted from the real story in Darfur by its New Age empowerment philosophy. We hear too many extortions to the effect of: “don’t ask what you can do, tell us what you can do.” To its credit, it is non-partisan. In fact, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) comes across best of all politicians who appear in the film. He is well informed and genuinely seems to care about Darfur when seen meeting with Cheadle. The music is also effective, with Graeme Revell’s score employing musicians from Darfur, as does the nice recasting of Stevie Wonder’s “Love’s in Need of Love Today” from Songs in the Key of Life, as a duet for Wonder and Bono.

Unfortunately, DN does little to substantially increase the general understanding of events in Darfur with what it presents on film, shying away from graphic examinations of the nature of the atrocities in Darfur. DN just gives too little attention to the full historical and political context of the genocide, and too much screen time to Hollywood activists, like Cheadle and George Clooney, who are a world away from the events in Darfur.