Finding right pitch is key to music biopics, as Miles Ahead and Born to be Blue show
Films about the lives of jazz greats Miles Davis and Chet Baker are the latest evidence famous musicians and their art are usually too complex to be tidily summed up in one big-screen package
Pity the filmmaker who attempts to capture musical genius on screen.
The thrills that a brilliant performer creates on stage for an admiring audience do not easily translate from three dimensions to two. Even the most skilled actors tend to emulate – not inhabit – the persona of a singular musician. And directors and screenwriters face inherent, persistent conflict between what really happened and what raises dramatic sparks on film.
I hasten to note that the occasional miracle has occurred, with some films managing to convey at least a sense of a great musician’s art and manner. Gary Busey practically became the protagonist in The Buddy Holly Story (1978); director Bertrand Tavernier evoked the joys and melancholy of the jazz life in ’Round Midnight (1986); Joaquin Phoenix illuminated the dark sides of Johnny Cash in Walk the Line (2005); and co-directors Tono Errando, Javier Mariscal and Fernando Trueba poetically told the story of Afro-Cuban jazz in the animated, Oscar-nominated masterpiece Chico & Rita (2010).