Cadillac Records
Cadillac Records
DIR/WRI: Darnell Martin • PRO: Petra Hoebel, Andrew Lack, Sofia Sondervan • DOP: Anastas N. Michos • ED: Peter C. Frank • DES: Linda Burton • CAST: Beyoncé Knowles, Adrien Brody, Jeffrey Wright, Columbus Short, Eamonn Walker, Willie Dixon
Musical biopics labour under the weight of their true-life counterparts, making it next to impossible to please fans, family and even the person themselves with a filmic representation. The added difficulty of portraying the lives of many musical artists over an extended period of time means that the chances of making a film people will enjoy drops even lower.
Cadillac Records falls between the two stools of giving a true biopic and an entertaining movie – it tries to tell too much too quickly, making it impossible to actively engage with any character. The story hop-skips-and-jumps from Muddy Waters on a plantation, through his being discovered and ruined by money, to his final redemption. During this time, other players weave in and out of his tale with varying degrees of focus – Howlin’ Wolf in particular gets a raw deal. Eamonn Walker’s Wolf is a deeply intense, brooding man, filled with racial pride and an abhorrence of being ‘owned’ by any record label. His clash with Jeffrey Wright’s Muddy Waters looks set to be the most interesting of the film, but is brushed over carelessly and inconclusively. With the entry of Beyoncé as Etta James, what felt like an almost-ensemble act suddenly gives way to a star-vehicle. Though she gives what will probably amount to a career-best performance as the troubled James, the dramatic shift in focus to her role jars the film immensely. While she sings song after song – compared to the small amount heard from Waters, Little Walter, Howlin’ Wolf and Chuck Berry – various montage sequences catch us up on the other characters, as they become secondary to Beyoncé’s voice and an incongruous love story with the owner of the record label.
Through all of this incomplete storytelling of a musical movement that changed the world, a lazy voiceover by Willie Dixon (Cedric the Entertainer) keeps the audience up to date with time jumps. Adrien Brody plays Leonard Chess, one man of two behind Chess Records – his brother, Phil, is left out of the story – and is a constant throughout, anchoring the story as a tale of a record company, not of the people. His wishy-washy ‘help the downtrodden black musician’ performance is a pale reflection of what might have been an interesting character – his character’s possible motives and direction remains unclear and unexpanded.
There are moments that make the movie somewhat entertaining. The music, obviously, holds it all together, but we are given far too little of some and too much of others. Little Walter’s troubled addictions, Chuck Berry’s imprisonment, and even Muddy Waters climb to recognition is necessarily reduced under the weight of presenting a coherent story arc, with the Hollywood-adored ‘closure’ ending. Racial segregation of the era, the implications of a white man dictating the musical course of black music, and even the true facts fall by the wayside in this attempt to package an era in under two hours. Perhaps shifting the focus from the entire record label over a huge length of time to just one person’s story might have been a more achievable, and ultimately more cinematically rewarding, task.
While it is admirable that director and writer Darnell Martin ambitiously attempted the tangled representation of an entire movement, her hard work has unfortunately resulted in a lacklustre movie that offers little insight into the music or the amazing people who created it.
Sarah Griffin
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