Pity the filmmaker who attempts to capture musical genius on screen.
The thrills that a brilliant performer creates on stage for an admiring audience do not easily translate from three dimensions to two. Even the most skilled actors tend to emulate — not inhabit — the persona of a singular musician. And directors and screenwriters face inherent, persistent conflict between what really happened and what raises dramatic sparks on film.
Two new jazz movies — “Miles Ahead,” about Miles Davis, and “Born to Be Blue,” about Chet Baker — crystallize these challenges, though one proves far more successful than the other.
I hasten to note that the occasional miracle has occurred, with some films managing to convey at least a sense of a great musician’s art and manner. Gary Busey practically became the protagonist in “The Buddy Holly Story” (1978); director Bertrand Tavernier evoked the joys and melancholy of the jazz life in “‘Round Midnight” (1986); Joaquin Phoenix illuminated the dark sides of Johnny Cash in “Walk the Line” (2005); and co-directors Tono Errando, Javier Mariscal and Fernando Trueba poetically told the story of Afro-Cuban jazz in the animated, Oscar-nominated masterpiece “Chico & Rita” (2010).
But in the wake of these appealing films, uncounted others have shown the perils of the music-bio genre. Remember Forest Whitaker portraying alto saxophone genius Charlie Parker as a drug-addled buffoon in Clint Eastwood’s plodding “Bird” (1988)? Cornel Wilde dripping fake blood on the piano in the pulpy Frederic Chopin biopic “A Song to Remember” (1945)? Director Damien Chazelle laughably presenting jazz as both gladiatorial sport and overwrought soap opera — complete with rock-and-roll drum playing — in the Oscar-nominated “Whiplash” (2014)?