Re: [Harp-L] Review of Cadillac Records Movie

"Rick Dempster" <rick.dempster@xxxxxxxxxxx> · Fri, 19 Dec 2008 11:30:10 +1100

Reads pretty even-handedly to someone who hasn't seen the movie. (Wonder
if it'll get general release in Oz?..maybe not)
When it comes to music as  subject matter for film,  I prefer straight
fiction. A great example of this is 'Payday', written by Don Carpenter
and directed by Daryl Duke, starring Rip Torn. No biopic could get to
the heart of post-war country music the way this one does; the music, by
the way, is incidental.

RD

>>> <venkyr@xxxxxxx> 18/12/2008 21:42 >>>
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              Featured Blues Review 2 of 3

  Cadillac Records                               

  (Sony Pictures, 2008)                          

  Written and directed by Darnell Martin         

  This film is infuriating. It leaves out an     
  entire Chess brother. It supports the myth     
  that the Chess studio was always at the final  
  2120 South Michigan Avenue location, and       
  manages to suggest South Michigan Avenue is    
  little more than a narrow alley. It wasnât   
  and isnât.                                   

  This movie conflates early Elvis and the 1968  
  death of Little Walter (among other things)    
  into a single montage. The musicians werenât 
  just paid in Cadillacs and spending money,     
  though there is an important truth in that; it 
  took years of legal fighting to straighten out 
  the books, to get some financial justice for   
  some of the Chess artists. If casual blues     
  fans take their blues history from this film,  
  blues history is set backâagain.             

  And, of course it gets worse. The golden-hued  
  cotton fields of the delta are filmic pixie    
  dust. Muddy and Walter were not so tight for   
  so long; indeed, Walter walked off a Muddy     
  tour to form his own band. Jeffrey Wrightâs  
  Muddy Waters is an awfully earnest fellow, as  
  in so many bio-pic type movies, a              
  one-dimensional man. If you donât get the    
  flow, the humor, the sociality, the nobility,  
  the vanity, the sensuality of Muddy Waters,    
  you donât really have him at all. Some       
  critics have suggested that BeyoncÃ Knowles   
  should get an Academy Award nomination for her 
  anguished, blowsy, falling down, stoned take   
  on Etta James. Bracket the acting, and whether 
  or not it is bathetic, James deserves to have  
  a second and third thought in her head, and we 
  are ourselves no brain media monkeys if we     
  accept this version of her as authoritative.   
  Who and what gets left out and foreshortened   
  in this movie is breathtaking.                 

  Still, if you love the blues, if you have      
  spent some of your life in the times and       
  places of this movie or only visiting them in  
  hours of listening and learning and reflection 
  and whimsy, you should see Cadillac Records.   
  When the pistol goes into the guitar case, the 
  blues is punctuated like the rim shot off the  
  snare. When Walter rolls up in the Caddy with  
  the doors off, the edginess of the whole       
  enterprise is underlined like a bright         
  harmonica squeal. If you get from Cadillac     
  Records the permeable boundary between money,  
  a little money, and no money at all, if you    
  pick up the way that twists the art and the    
  artist, you should have a better handle about  
  who is playing at your blues festival this     
  year and what is making them tick.             

  I donât trust the old story, the             
  commonplace, that the American kids of the     
  1950s, victims of sexual inhibition, cultural  
  constipation, and political stupefaction, were 
  in musical hibernation waiting to be           
  negrified-urbanized-electrified-emotionalized; 
  and when it arrived it overwhelmed the young   
  and the old, the unspeakable truth spoken, the 
  horror of social chaos turned loose, a new     
  market thrown open for business. The fact is,  
  there were always interesting, challenging,    
  de-sublimating things going on in American     
  music and culture. But Cadillac Records needs  
  this commonplace to get its story over onto    
  the arc of fame and fortune. If you are paying 
  attention to the movie, Cadillac Records is a  
  narrative of more basic human exuberance,      
  weakness, genius, frustration, luck, and       
  hustle. That seems truer to me to the world I  
  live in than a tale of the perils of wealth    
  and celebrity, courted, won, lost, and         
  realized.                                      

  With all of its omissions and exaggerations,   
  this film probably estimates the right size,   
  the modest but important size, of Chicagoâs  
  Chess in shaping our popular cultural world,   
  and doing so tells a story of only very        
  slightly larger than life human beings. I was  
  infuriated and engrossed by this telling.      

  Review by Dale Clark                           

www.myspace.com/harpdad