I recently watched a new biopic entitled Cadillac Records (2009). Sad but true. It's a musical recreation of early recording artists at Chess Records circa 1950-1960's, the Chicago Blues' holiest temple. Marquee roles include Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Etta James, Howlin' Wolf and Chuck Berry. Pulling strings from behind the glass is owner/macher, Leonard Chess. Unfortunately, Hollywood can even fuck up the blues. In it's profligate grab for cash, the executives seem to have found a formula which entails hiring music and film stars to pose and emote for an hour and a half in order to sell a soundtrack. Do they teach this stuff at USC graduate film school? Or does the new breed bypass appreciation of the medium altogether? Is it all dollars and cents?
For every good bit of casting, such as Jeffrey Wright in the role of Muddy Waters, there are countless others who flail around, mug, grimace, bleed, and of course sing. Adrian Brody will not remember this role as a benchmark in his career. At what point did the director, Darnell Martin, throw up her hands and quit caring? Contracting Beyonce to fill the role of Etta James is like casting a Persian kitten with dyed tips to play a bloody-mouthed mother lion growling her need across the hot nighttime skies. Whoever made this movie should be ashamed. Hell, I'm ashamed and I only watched it.
I understand it's easy to criticize or complain, and difficult to make a good movie. However, I also realize that it's difficult to make a bad movie as well. So, why bother to make a movie at all if you have no intention of holding it next to Orson Welles, or Vincente Minnelli, or even Julie Taymor? Cadillac Records had a larger budget than anything Sam Fuller ever had, noticeably larger than E.G. Ulmer, Joseph Lewis, Gordon Parks, Ida Lupino, Jacques Tourneur, Monte Hellman, Oscar Micheaux, or any director of the French or Japanese "new wave." Go back to making music videos, or episodic television. Give the producers back their money and say, "Sorry, your project stinks. It's a piece of fluff, candy gloss without an ounce of redemptive intention." It even brushes pretty close to racism for its black cast. I say that not solely because of its reliance on stereotyped 1950's black men, so dumb as to be unaware of any business acumen even after 20 years of writing, singing, recording, partnerships and touring. All they really need is a flask filled with gin and a new Cadillac. Natch. The black women are equally as cartoonish: mothers or whores. We could just as easily be flinching while watching Butterfly McQueen in Cabin in the Sky (1943). However, the music with Duke Ellington, Lena Horne, Louis Armstrong and Ethel Waters was far, far superior to this over-produced, antiseptic Hollywood interpretation of the infamous Chicago sound. Jeffrey Wright was the only actor who earned his pay. The only one who gave a nuanced performance, even with a stiff script and negligible dialogue. This movie is so bad it will probably make money. The producers know their market: youthful audiences aroused by celebrity casts (Mos Def, Beyonce), and older fans enticed by the Blues legends of their youth. We need look no farther than the recent box office success of similar films including Taylor Hackford's Ray, James Mangold's I Walk the Line, and Bill Condon's Dreamgirls. Each one focusing on the recording industry with its supply of soundtrack hits, stars and prodigious awards. This movie dips into that same well.
Cadillac Records borrows heavily from those films, but lacks any focus. It's a compendium of characters, songs, sub-plots in search of a main thread. They'd probably have achieved their ends more successfully by making Muddy, thereby concentrating on one major luminary instead of an entire stable of acts. Or Etta, since R and B is a more commercially viable commodity in 2009 than the three-chord limitations of Chicago Blues. In fact Cadillac Records tried to fit about 5 biopics into one, which was an unfortunate conception.
Though the movie is about music, the actual mix is too lush. So much so that it sounds as if a single acoustic guitar with an elemental pick-up being played on a busy street in Chicago becomes a Beethoven concerto for slide. Simplicity of style was jettisoned which is understandable in today's market, but proved a major concession when refusing to deal seriously with urban blight, racism, and poverty-- the wellspring of the electric Blues. Cadillac Records reflected the Chicago Blues scene of the 1950's the way The Wizard of Oz portrayed Kansas farm life--with over-produced theatricality. We assume soundtrack spin-offs will become lucrative as well as the global dvd market. So, everybody wins. Everyone's happy--except those malcontents who keep harping on the far-from-compelling story, unbelievable characters, and wretched dialogue; the ones who think camera and audio crews should assist the story and not merely showcase this month's newest technology. Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Jimmy Rodgers, Hubert Sumlin, Howlin' Wolf, Chuck Berry, Etta James, Sonnyboy Williamson, Buddy Guy, Little Milton, Memphis Slim, Bo Didley, J.B. Lenoir, Gene Ammons, Koko Taylor, Fontella Bass, Sugar Pie DeSanto, Johnny "Guitar" Watson, Jimmy McCracklin, Sonny Stitt, Pigmeat Markham, Ramsey Lewis, Gene Chandler, Big Bill Broonzy and Washboard Sam: quite a list. They made their living at Chess Records and the blues clubs that booked them. They understood the difference between mediocrity and excellence. They each gave the entirety of themselves. It wasn't perfection they inhabited, not 8 octave range. There's a certain proud ferocity in early 1950's Blues that is integral to its appreciation. The musicians were aiming for the heart of the matter, not mere proficiency. Not one of them hoped to make a mediocre record because "that's what the marketing people can sell." If they couldn't put their stamp of individual greatness on the song, or the lick, or the solo, they weren't headliners. Why would movie makers feel any different?
The music, characters and story in this entertainment are facile and flaccid. A tribute lounge band in Las Vegas gives more integrity to the Chicago legends than this movie does. There's something so soulless and imitative about it, as if it were written, filmed, edited and finished by a cell of marketing executives. Doesn't seem like selling popcorn is that exciting , does it?
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