Powerful blues songs drive clunky 'Cadillac Records'

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on December 04, 2008 at 10:00 PM, updated December 05, 2008 at 10:51 AM
Adrien Brody is label owner Leonard Chess, and Jeffrey Wright is Muddy Waters in "Cadillac Records."

Cadillac Records (R) TriStar (109 min.) Directed by Darnell Martin. With Adrien Brody, Jeffrey Wright, Beyonce Knowles. Opens Friday at theaters in New Jersey. TWO AND A HALF STARS

No other popular music comes as directly, painfully from the soul.

Rock'n' roll has the adrenaline rush of parties and rebellion. Jazz is all intellect and quicksilver creativity. But the blues? The blues are messy. The blues are raw. The blues are pain.

And messy, raw and painful are the lives of the people who make them.

The movie is called "Cadillac Records," due to the get-a-hit, get-a-car glad-handing of the real label's owner. But it's the story of Chess Records, the storefront Chicago company whose roster could double as a hall of fame.

Chuck Berry. Muddy Waters. Etta James.

Sadly, the movie isn't nearly as direct or accomplished as the artists it wants to immortalize. In fact, everything about it feels rushed -- from the actors' line readings, often lost in mumbles, to the script, which awkwardly lurches about trying to get to everything in less than two hours.

Beyonce Knowles is outstanding as Etta James, who, like many of her contemporaries, could be the focus of a film bio.

It's like a 45, played at 78.

True, the musical styles of the bluesmen are well captured -- often remarkably, by actors who aren't known for their musicality. The great stage actor Jeffrey Wright captures the proud simplicity of Muddy Waters. And Eamonn Walker is a marvelous Howling Wolf, turning "Smokestack Lightning" into something best heard at midnight at a country crossroads.

Particularly good is Beyonce Knowles as Etta James, the baby-faced addict filled to bursting with fragile vulnerability and explosive talent. She's so good, in fact, you want the whole movie to be about her, her love for the label owner, and her battles with heroin; it's her chance, a real "Lady Sings the Rhythm and Blues" part, and you want more.

Unfortunately the movie focuses on label owner Leonard Chess, born Lejzor Czyz in Poland (and played here by Adrien Brody). It's not just that, once again, this is a black story told through a white man's eyes (although it is); it's that it doesn't tell the story in an interesting way. What was it, in the soul of this Jewish emigre, that responded so powerfully to the laments of rural African-Americans? What was it, really, that he heard?

You can guess, based on "Mo Better Blues," what Spike Lee would have done with this material (particularly Chess' casual, and sometimes exploitive, paternalism). But director Darnell Martin, who also wrote the script, seems overwhelmed, working overtime to juggle four or five subplots (almost any one of the Chess artists would rate his or her own bio). Her movie doesn't take the risks it could, or should.

It could have the lush fullness of one of James' jazzy, crossover hits. It should have the back-and-forth, call-and-response structure of the blues themselves (borrowed, mostly, from plantation work songs) in which an idea is put forth, repeated and then completed. But instead, it just chugs along, like the trains that brought so many of these artists north.

"Cadillac Records" could have been a showcase for Knowles (who helped produce it, undoubtedly with that aim). It might have been a provocative exploration of the mid-century bonds between Jews and African-Americans -- or, at the very least, an examination of great black artists like Howling Wolf and Little Walter who are today, ironically, best known to geeky white-boy music fans. Instead it's a movie that's, mostly, a soundtrack.

But, good lord, still. What a soundtrack.

Rating note: The film contains strong language, violence, substance abuse and sexuality.
