Miles Ahead
Directed by: Don Cheadle
Written by: Steven Baigelman & Don Cheadle
Starring: Don Cheadle, Ewan McGregor, Emayatzy Corinealdi, Lakeith Lee Stanfield, Michael Stuhlbarg
Biography/Drama/Music - 100 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 4 Apr 2016
Written by: Steven Baigelman & Don Cheadle
Starring: Don Cheadle, Ewan McGregor, Emayatzy Corinealdi, Lakeith Lee Stanfield, Michael Stuhlbarg
Biography/Drama/Music - 100 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 4 Apr 2016
Don Cheadle crafts Miles Ahead different than most biopics but the underlying particulars remain the same; a musical genius succumbs to his demons letting narcotics affect his passions, professionally and personally. However, Cheadle took a chance and stepped away from the formula we know so well; the man was born, he rose, he fell, he died. There is no time and space in Miles Ahead for the birth of Miles Davis, his rise, and his death, but there is ample room to study his lost years of drug-induced idleness in the late ‘70s. Perhaps more inspired by Miles Davis than based on biographical facts, Don Cheadle doesn’t want his audience to walk away with names, places, and dates; he wants us to leave with a feeling. Miles Davis was a bundle of energy personified through a horn and he was no idol on a pedestal, but struggled through a flawed, destructive genius.
Cheadle claims over the years multiple people approached him saying he must play Miles Davis, including Davis’s own family. There is no denying a physical resemblance between the two, but Cheadle said the only way he could do it justice would be to pen the story himself. Cheadle not only co-wrote the screenplay, he directed the film, and stars in every single scene. Cheadle’s passion project emerged from the ideas of others and he dove in, all in. I never heard the real Miles Davis speak, but according to Don Cheadle, his voice sounded like a carton of cigarettes. Before and after the scene, Cheadle stayed in character issuing orders in the Davis rasp; wouldn’t want to lose your place as an actor when it’s time to slip the director hat on.
Cheadle claims over the years multiple people approached him saying he must play Miles Davis, including Davis’s own family. There is no denying a physical resemblance between the two, but Cheadle said the only way he could do it justice would be to pen the story himself. Cheadle not only co-wrote the screenplay, he directed the film, and stars in every single scene. Cheadle’s passion project emerged from the ideas of others and he dove in, all in. I never heard the real Miles Davis speak, but according to Don Cheadle, his voice sounded like a carton of cigarettes. Before and after the scene, Cheadle stayed in character issuing orders in the Davis rasp; wouldn’t want to lose your place as an actor when it’s time to slip the director hat on.
Cheadle (Avengers: Age of Ultron) says Miles never looked back, always forward. This characteristic may or may not apply to the real life Miles Davis, but the film contradicts his observation. Davis habitually jumps into flashback mode riding a guilty conscience over his relationship with one of his ex-wives, dancer Frances Taylor (Emayatzy Corinealdi). Davis even borders on homicidal should someone even allude to her existence. These are standard cocaine and alcohol-inspired rueful flashbacks the audience has seen time and again in biopics. Yet, Cheadle and co-writer Steve Baigelman, who also co-wrote the story for Get on Up, the recent James Brown biopic, go a dimension further and introduce a character named Junior (Lakeith Lee Stansfield, Straight Outta Compton).
Latter-day Davis walks into a smoky jazz club and sees a young virtuoso wailing away on the trumpet. Davis licks his fingers and instead of fading into a decades old flashback, he is in fact seeing himself on stage. Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie used to call Davis ‘Junior’ when he was an up and coming phenomenon. There is a brief glimpse inside Junior’s scrabble apartment with a subservient wife and young daughter, supposed to be his first wife, Irene. As only a casual jazz fan, I recognized none of these tie-ins and subtle clues. Aficionados and Davis acolytes are the only audience members who will figure it out without being told.
I love the way Cheadle opts to hide all of this in plain sight. I assumed Junior was just another talent Davis latched onto just like he did for John Coltrane. Pardon the Coltrane reference, Cheadle leaves him out of the story entirely because he was not involved in this slice of Davis’s life. Even though it’s a passion project, Cheadle still requires an ‘in’ for the audience who know next to nothing about jazz and that is Ewan McGregor (A Million Ways to Die in the West) playing a fictional reporter trying to weasel an exclusive to sell to Rolling Stone or one of it clones. McGregor plays Dave Brill, a man who interrupts Davis’s foggy solitude and sets in motion the action arc whereby sleazy businessmen steal Davis’s latest ‘secret’ recording. At the start of the film, Davis has recorded nothing in five years, but he continues to hound his record company for money.
There is an over-the-top car chase where Davis and a goon fire pistols at each other over the recording, an event most assuredly invented but spliced in as the entrance and exit as Cheadle either shows us how manic Davis could be or to give us a cheap thrill. Take your pick really. There is also an experimental ending jazz lovers will dig but laymen will puzzle over. Rising above whether or not you walk away from Miles Ahead fully comprehending everything Don Cheadle throws at the audience, you will appreciate that Miles Davis did not like the word jazz; he preferred social music. Cheadle neither offers us jazz instruction nor a biography; he delivers us the essence of a tortured soul, a man who couldn't blow his horn anymore because the past was in his way.
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