Writer/director Darnell Martin has an obvious passion for the blues and for the men and women who sang them. It comes across in every frame of CADILLAC RECORDS, based on the true story of Chess Records, whose founder, Leonard Chess, had a penchant for handing out Cadillacs to his recording artists. Executive producer and pop star Beyonce Knowles has an obvous passion for the blues, too, and she also has an obvious passion for a meaty role, in this case that of Etta James, the troubled singer whose life is the stuff of the blues. It comes across in the strong performance she gives as the tough-talking, hard-living singer that is highlighted with close-ups and glamour lighting, even during the overdose sequence when she’s under the shower.
The film takes an episodic approach to the story of how Chess Records came to be, and of the remarkable partnership between Chess (Adrien Brody) and the first artist he signed, Muddy Waters (Jeffrey Wright). Even with the narration by Willie Dixon (Cedric the Entertainer), the man who wrote many of Chess Records’ hits, to walk the audience through the story, it’s a challenge to keep up with it all. Eric Bogosian, for example, isn’t identified as Allen Freed until long after he’s made his appearance as one of the DJs who took payola, integrated the airwaves, and put Chess on the map. What’s left are performances that leave indelible impressions of who these people were and the times in which they lived. Little Walter (Columbus Short in a poignant turn as the lost soul with a hair-trigger temper), barely has time to enjoy his success before Muddy hands the teetotalling younger man a flask to calm him down after some bad news. That one sip leads, in the highest of cliché fashions, to his precipitous downward spiral into addiction. Muddy himself is recording for an itinerant musicologist from the Library of Congress back in the Mississippi Delta, then on top of the world, hair tall and lacquered, pocket handkerchief just so, and then down to his last $200 after musical tastes change in a turnaround that leaves a sonic boom in its wake and barely gives Wright any traction as an actor. Chuck Berry (Mos Def as the coolest cat on the screen), drops in, takes over, and just as quickly drops out as he duck-walks his way over the color line to the screams of adoring fans of both races while thumbing his nose at Jim Crow. Eamonn Walker owns the screen in the supporting role of Howlin’ Wolf, a singer with a raspy voice full of pain, and principles about the relative nature of entitlement backed up with a presence that is murderous in its calm sense of justice that brooks no contradiction. Brody’s job for the most part is to listen to the music, the which he does with a full heart. Chess, watching his talent record in the studio he built with dubious money, is viscerally transported by what he hears. It’s barely necessary to back that up with the futzy dialogue about how he risked everything to found the company. On the other hand, the showdowns over royalties and other bits of the dark side of the music business, de rigeur in any story involving said biz, is perfunctory with a distinctly marginalized feel.
The racial component of those segregated times is handled with a surer hand and a precise economy that does nothing to lessen concussive impact of seeing what Jim Crow really meant. Racial assaults, verbal and worse, were swallowed with a smile and sometimes with some teeth. If Short’s character eggs it on with something less than finesse, there is Def’s Berry, taking it all in with a savvy forbearance and just the right self-mocking irony to stick it to the Man without the Man quite figuring out he’s been dissed. Both men trust the material to convey the drama without resorting to histrionics that would cheapen it into trite melodrama. And when equality became the law of the land, if not the spirit, the film is clear-eyed and succinct about the unexpected effect that had on Chess Records.
Knowles, to her credit, dines but daintily on the scenery rather than chewing it ferociously and finds the required heart beneath Etta’s armored exterior. Still, it’s Gabrielle Union as Muddy’s common-law wife, Geneva, who steals Knowles’ thunder with a subtle performance that is as shattering as it is nuanced playing a strong woman who falls under Muddy’s spell.
CADILLAC RECORDS takes no chances, but what it lacks in originality it makes up for by being so completely enraptured by the music that it takes the audience along with it. Even if you’ve never heard Muddy or Little Walter before, you’ll understand what made the Rolling Stones (who pop up at one point in a piquant episode that sparks its own discrimination) and Eric Clapton devoted fans. And you’ll understand why it was music that help change segregation into the dirty word it should have been all along.
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