It’s 2:30 am in Bwari, and the air is different today. Mannywellz plays in low tempo — we don’t need no closure, baby. You can hear him beat the talking drum to propel the beats. This is beautiful artistry. He doesn’t just string things together, hoping it blows up. No, he knows what he’s doing.
But hey, it’s 2:30 am, and I enjoy sitting at the balcony of this two-man room. From here, I can stare into the abyss, get some fresh air, and watch the kids at a nearby school arrive in the morning. This is also where I was sitting the day raging fire kept burning towards the building earlier in February. The fire that started small would soon engulf the entire grass area, and what did the security guy do? Rushed to get a bucket of water, spraying at the fire with a tiny water bailer. For a moment, it felt like a skit.
2:30 am in Bwari it is, and I am not reading tonight. I am telling you about these two important movies I saw — Ray and Whiplash. I completed the movies and thought to myself, “What makes a movie truly great?” The acting, the message, the emotions, the verisimilitude? When I watched Malcolm X (the Denzel version), I knew I had seen something remarkable. It felt like I knew Malcolm himself. You’d think I partook in his tragedy. This is how I feel about Ray, which is the best biopic I’ve seen, at the moment. Jamie Foxx delivered an exquisite performance; he was over the top. He practically reincarnated Ray Robinson Charles. You can understand why he won that Oscars — no one could have done it better.
The Genius of Ray Charles is well documented. Both as his album name and his life. A boy loses his brother in the early years of his life, goes blind at about age 7, loses his mother too, and while being blind, becomes one of the greatest singers and pianists in history — a legendary musician defying genre categorizations. The movie highlights the influence of Ray’s mother, Aretha Robinson, in shaping his life. To excel in spite of his circumstances — “You’re blind, you ain’t dumb; you lost your sight, not your mind.” The biopic also spotlights his heroin addiction, starting as a mere relaxation tool to a full-blown crisis.
“If you can play the blues, you can do anything, baby” — Ray Charles
Jamie’s perfect portrayal of Ray triggered my interest in the behind-the-scenes. He met with Ray as part of his audition qualification, and they had a great sync playing the piano. But even that didn’t happen by sheer luck. Asides from having prepared for the role, Foxx himself has a music background. He began taking piano lessons at age three and practically “started out in music.” People have argued the role was made for him, and I couldn’t agree any less. The combined effect of Foxx’s exemplary ability to make impressions and his music affiliation made him a perfect pick. By design, some people are built for shit. Foxx didn’t just embody Ray Charles. He was him!
Beyond taking further piano lessons to step into the part, Foxx had his eyes glued shut for 14 hours daily to immerse himself in Ray. To play the blind legend, he had to live it. And you could see all this play out in how he finessed the role. From gestures to walking to speaking to fillers to Raying. He was flourishing on them acting stages.
But central to this excellence is practice. The mastery of Foxx and the Genius of Ray predicate on practice — the starting point of what a working man can achieve. Without this ingredient, they both would have fallen short. The movie Whiplash centers on this concept of practice, albeit in a problematic fashion. What does it take to engender brilliance without blemish? 10,000 iterations? Natural talent? Or sheer grit to prove someone wrong?
Terrence Fletcher: I don’t think people understood what it was I was doing at Shaffer. I wasn’t there to conduct. Any fucking moron can wave his arms and keep people in tempo. I was there to push people beyond what’s expected of them. I believe that is… an absolute necessity. Otherwise, we’re depriving the world of the next Louis Armstrong. The next Charlie Parker. I told you that story about how Charlie Parker became Charlie Parker, right?
Andrew Neiman: Jo Jones threw a cymbal at his head
Whiplash may pass off as a hard watch. The language is harsh, haughty, raw. The teaching methods and the teacher are abusive. The Charlie Parker reference is historically inaccurate, too — the cymbal was thrown toward his feet, more to tell him he was out of tune than to decapitate him, as Fletcher argues.
Bar the above, the movie borders on the reverence of jazz in its truest form. Mid-way in, you can tell you have good cinema in your palm. It didn’t have to win the Oscars to validate that. One popular scene in the movie is where Fletcher — a military-style commanding jazz teacher — hurls a metal chair at Andrew’s head. The scene is acclaimed because it’s sudden. A seemingly calm Fletcher becomes aggravated in seconds, as Andrew continues to rush the drumming by a hair. After intermittent corrections, a series of not quite my tempo, he hurls a chair at Andrew’s head, which he dodges sharply. Then Fletcher comes on to him and asks, “Are you a rusher or a dragger?”
Casting J.K Simmons as Fletcher is perfect. Ordinarily, he looks unforgiving, which is precisely the task. He had to be vicious to command precision. Perfectionism can be a curse, especially when the perfectionist has to relate with others — and most unfortunately, if these “others” are students, apprentices, or employees. In Andrew’s case, he is a student under Fletcher. “Are you a rusher or a dragger?” Now, he lives to prove he is neither; he must be perfect. A villain origin story propelled by a toxic approach to practice. This does not end healthily.
Drilling yourself with extreme methods is a personal problem. But it becomes bothersome when you have to impose your ideals on others. When Michael Jordan mentioned that he doubted he could be a good coach, this was the flaw he acknowledged. That considering the standards to which he held himself, it may be unfair to hold most of today’s players to the same. And most importantly, he can’t tell where his emotions would be if they refuse to follow through.
We all may have met people like this in one discipline or the other. In art, music, career, sports, debate, and even religion. These individuals believe they hold pristine values to maintaining the sanctity of a field they revere. They want your pronunciation on point; your passes, accurate; your work, detailed; your creed, conservative; your life, devoted to the cause; and, like Fletcher, your playing — precisely at his desired tempo, not a hair short.
Without a doubt, standards are incredible, in fact, non-negotiable. But at what point does a deep admiration for preserving culture become abusive gatekeeping? Because when condescension finds a place in teaching, the nobility of your intentions loses priority, however honourable those intentions may be.
Either you’re deliberately out of tune and sabotaging my band, or you don’t know you’re out of tune, and that’s even worse. — Terrence Fletcher
What Ray and Whiplash highlight is important, even though the lessons should be measured. Two things appear crucial to mastery: something must push, and something must give. Harnessing a potential is a function of true, unwavering commitment. But getting out of habit is challenging if your environment praises the littlest of efforts, telling you it suffices. In the absence of a push factor, you may never really understand how much you’re capable of achieving. And if such awareness isn’t complemented by the readiness to sacrifice, you may know so much you can do and yet be far off the radar all your life.
Neiman would later deliver an electric musical performance in the final scene. His greatest push was to prove his worthiness to his teacher. That he, too, has a Charlie Parker in him. But at what cost? His mental and emotional health had waned at the realization of that success. But that didn’t matter at the moment. He had just led Fletcher’s band to an incredible rendition. He’s over the world.
Now, this may be great, impressive art. But these are extreme and abusive methods by all measures. Nonetheless — and without prejudicing that point — a society that romanticizes mediocrity harms its youthful potential. Where many people do just enough or aim beneath that, it would be remarkably difficult to sustain excellence, to unearth genius. A refining process doesn’t have to be enjoyable. It has to be effective. Efficient at working away your flaws and improving your strength. You’d argue that the sense is in good measure — to push yourself without losing your mind. I agree. So does a closing entry in the movie The Boys in Company C:
“…until somebody finally figures out that living has got to be more important than winning.”
But I guess the recurring item with those who pursue mastery and genius is that they rarely ever know when to stop, if at all. It also doesn’t matter what you have to say. They just go on and on and on…
