For better, worse, and middling, the lure of the music-legend biopic is a refrain that won’t quit in Hollywood. Sometimes, the impulse leads to enlightening outcomes, as with Ray and Walk the Line, giving us at least some sense of the import, the story arcs, and the core charisma and vulnerability of Ray Charles and Johnny Cash, respectively — partly thanks to the bold lived-in performances of Jamie Foxx and Joaquin Phoenix.
Suddenly, as if in a conspiratorial rush, three recent films take on the lives — if in piecemeal, uneven fashion — of three more undisputedly iconic American musical legends, with I Saw the Light (re: Hank Williams, true country hero), Born to Be Blue (jazz trumpeter/singer/heartthrob Chet Baker), and the daring, if partially wayward, Miles Ahead, the Miles Davis portrait from director/cowriter/star Don Cheadle. That two are from the jazz world — although Miles’s legacy soars above Chet’s more specialized niche as a poetic romantic — comes as a pleasant surprise, an equal time equation for America’s greatest music (but we digress).
None of these films shy away from the substance-abusive subplots of these artists’ lives, and the more squalid, tabloid-y aspect of the Hank, Chet, and Miles trilogy is also a tale of booze, blow, and junk. Thankfully, the films — each in its own way and with its own degree of integrity — deal with the essential artistic and musical epiphanies, “hits,” and touchstones, and recognize the role of their self-destructive biochemical habits in the fragile makeup and narrative of their genius. (Yes, the over-used G-word does apply here, to varying extents).