Born to be Blue

Born to be Blue follows famed jazz musician Chet Baker as he struggles with both losing and attempting to regain his ability to play the trumpet, as well as quitting his addiction to heroin.

Ethan Hawke plays Chet Baker, and I was a little unsure as to what I'd think. I haven't been terribly impressed by Hawke, despite liking him in his movies. He hasn't blown me away with anything. That is, until this movie. He's pretty great. He fits the character perfectly as this rough-around-the-edges but still used to the wealthy lifestyle which he has and a little naive because of it kind of guy. One would think that the higher tone of voice he uses for this role might be annoying, but it really isn't. Plus he just looks the part. He was perfect in every way for this film and his character.

This is a movie about a famous jazz musician, so we can assume that the soundtrack will be good. And it certainly is. Not much to say there, but it's great. The fact that Hawke even sang all of it is even more impressive on his part. He's got a great voice for the part too, and I'll definitely be listening to this soundtrack in the future.

The flashback sequences were pretty cool. Normally filters placed over a scene bother me, but in this case it worked really well. That, and the fact that it isn't the whole movie placed under a filter. Plus, the filter is just really cool. It suits the movie with it's black and white look with a tint of blue. It looks like a flashback, but it has this dark liveliness to it, similarly to how Baker's life was portrayed. Furthermore, the movie decides to use the same actress as his lover for both the flashbacks and the present for reasons that I won't spoil. But trust me, it was a interesting decision and it worked.

And the climax, or more just the whole last twenty or so minutes, are amazing. They are easily the best part of the movie. There's an excellent scene right before the climax itself involving a decision Baker has to make, and it's so good. Of course, Hawke continues to tell us how great he is in this role. Then the climax itself starts and it's great. And as it comes to a close it wraps itself up in a way that we don't see often. It's a realistic, unconventional way of doing it that I figure is the truth. As far as biographies go, we don't see a lot of them where the ending isn't all good and happy. Born to be Blue is one of those rare movies that has the balls to tell an honest story with an honest ending, and I loved it. Right down to how certain small elements were handled were just on point.

If I can find any real error in this movie its the fact that the general plot of some skilled person hitting rock bottom and working their way back up has been used many times. However, the presentation is all that really matters in a case like this, and I thought it was pretty great. On top of that the movie is, despite being only 97 minutes long a little slow. Maybe I expected it to fly by because of how much shorter it is than some other movies, but I thought it dragged just a little from time to time.

Overall Born to be Blue is pretty fantastic. The acting, specifically from Ethan Hawke is great, the music is great, the climax is fantastic, and it all around nailed it's presentation of an otherwise unoriginal idea. This is one of the best movies of the year and I would definitely recommend checking it out.

Jazz trumpeter Chet Baker (Ethan Hawke) gains early fame for his West Coast Swing. Miles Davis dismisses him as White Men's Hope. Drug addiction breaks up his marriage to Elaine (Carmen Ejogo). Years later, he is struggling. He meets actress Jane (Carmen Ejogo) who is playing Elaine in his movie. His drug dealer smashes his face for not paying. He loses the movie and his ability to play. Even his producer friend Dick Bock (Callum Keith Rennie) has had enough. With Jane's help, he lives in a van and slowly regains his trumpet playing.

The flow is idiosyncratic like jazz. I also would like more of his early drug addiction downfall. There are some good character work from Ethan Hawke. There isn't a overriding drama but it has good some personal moments. This is solid work from Hawke but the movie is a bit slow as a whole.

I wouldn't go as far as to say that Ethan Hawke was "born" to play Chet Baker (no pun intended to the title), but this is the kind of performance that tends to be talked about for years to come. There's no front put up between him and the audience, and despite the vocal change to be a little more hoarse or whispery or however it was that Baker was naturally from his Oklahoma-cum-cigarette-strewn roots, it feels as if Hawke has slipped into Baker's shoes from the outset and that he just IS him. And though it's mostly set in the time period where Baker bottomed out the hardest - getting his teeth knocked out by a dealer while shooting a movie featuring himself as his own character in the 'Chet Baker Story - with those scenes from the movie in the movie (whether they were filmed or just imagined by Baker from the script written for him) Hawke gets to play multiple time periods and not in a typical bio-pic format.

As an actor he gets to have such a complex, vulnerable person to slip into, and at first I wasn't sure how he would do. I think Hawke's a terrific actor, though a lot of the time it seems as if it's just Hawke as... Ethan Hawke on screen, with some exceptions (like Gattaca), and even in the 'Before' films it seems just like it's this cool guy getting in front of the camera. It seems like a lot to keep harping on the lead performance like it means everything but in this case it kind of does - there's no Giamatti or Elizabeth Banks like in last year's Love & Mercy, and also the filmmaker behind this, Robert Budreau, is not making filming it quite like the standard bio-pic: long takes where the actor (also co-star Carmen Ejogo for most of it) has to keep our attention while playing a famous musician who was not someone with a presence off-stage that was immediately compelling.

There's a lot to dig in to here thematically, whether it's drugs or race (Baker being the 'white boy' among the black giants like Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie, the former doesn't take too kindly to Baker in the 50's prime by the way), but while watching the movie you don't need to think about that. It's simply about this man who has his own way of going about things, is gentle in his way, and yet there's an intensity, bordering on a rage, that makes him compelling. Is it about addiction as much as the Eastwood Charlie Parker movie (Bird)? Yes and no - yes in that it's always there, as it is for all addicts, and when a scene like after he plays a show at the local bar (where he's trying to rebuild his trumpet playing skills) and a 'fan' slips him some dope (to which he responds "I thought you were a nice girl"), it seems hard not to sort of feel sorry for Baker that he's in a world where it's almost expected, in a way, for the Jazz heroes to be stone-cold junkies.

But no in that it's primarily a love story, which is where the chemistry between Hawke and Ejogo is especially crucial and, in this case, kind of strange and awesome in the approach. Many times you simply see a famous musician or actor or whoever in a movie meet a girl and fall in love and they have the ups and downs (Ray and Walk the Line are little else if not that), but here the twist is that Baker meets his love interest as she is playing his *former* lover in the movie-that-didn't-finish in the 1950's. It's a meta touch, but it's not to the point where the director takes us out of the film to any annoying degree; it's cleverly done in the opening 10/15 minutes where we think, the audience trained on clichés of biopics, that we're seeing a black-and-white flashback of this jazz-man's story of playing in Birdland and doing such things as the "first time" on heroin with some local girl.

The trick is that Baker is always Baker, whether it's in the 'real life' of the movie or the movie within the movie, it's all a movie, after all! It helps that the music is wonderful, and that's not something that is incidental; I have no idea if Hawke is playing the trumpet (he likely isn't, a handful of actors play their own stuff, let alone well, in these movies), but he does have to sing, and it's remarkable work on songs that require a thin line to walk on. Baker wasn't that phenomenal a singer except in the aspect of ripping-off-skin-to-see-the-insides honesty. It hurts to see Baker sing, and to see Hawke sing as him, and all the more that they're tender love songs. It doesn't necessarily come right away either, as the first passion for this man was the trumpet. Whether he comes to it by himself is something the movie leaves out (though I could surmise it was organic), but the point is that by the time the last third comes we've seen this man live a real life, which is all that Miles Davis asked for anyway.

A sincere, heart-breaking and simultaneously uplifting movie that is just a drama about a man working his art (among the giants always in his mind or in front of him), and a true-life story second. That it involves one of the coolest of his form is a bonus, and with an actor delivering a career-highlight work as well.

"Born To Be Blue" (2015 release; 97 min.) is a movie about jazz legend Chet Baker. As the film opens, we are in "Lucca, Italy, 1966" and baker is in prison, only to be bailed out by a Hollywood director. When then go to "Birdland, New York City, 1954" when Baker is at the peak of his fame and fortune, only to be exposed to heroin by a femme fatale. As it turns out, we then understand that this entire sequence was reenacted back in "Los Angeles, 1966" with Baker, now on the com-back trail, starring in his own movie. Alas, misfortune strikes again, as Baker is viciously assaulted, to such a degree that he cannot play the trumpet anymore. Now he faces even longer odds to come back. At this point we are 15 min. into the movie but to tell you more would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.

Couple of comments: the movie does not tell us that this is a "true story" or "inspired by true events", and for good reason, as this is NOT a bio-pic in any way, shape or form about Chet Baker. Instead, the movie brings a fictionalized composite of certain elements and episodes of Baker's life. Canadian writer-director Robert Budreau makes this into his own cocktail mix, and the end result is quite good, and certainly entertaining. That said, the movie would not have succeeded if it weren't for the outstanding performance by Ethan Hawke as Chet Baker, I mean, Hawke nails it. Kudos also to Carmen Ejogo as Baker's love interest Jane (who is African-American). There are a number of key scenes in the movie. One that stands out for me is when Baker and Jane visit Baker's parents in Oklahoma. At one point, the less than friendly (and outright racist) Baker's dad sneers "I never dragged the Baker name through the mud", to which a stunned Baker has no reply, and simply walks away (and leaves for good), wow. If there is one criticism of the movie, I felt that the music was not given a full enough role. There are long stretches in the film where music seems to be an afterthought. Given Baker's fierce love for music, music should never be an afterthought when looking at Baker's life.

"Born To Be Blue" premiered to great acclaim at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival, but despite that only got a very limited theater release in the US (it never made it to my local art-house theater here in Cincinnati). So glad I finally picked this up as a DVD. A comparison between this movie and last year's "Miles Ahead" (about jazz legend Miles Davis) is inevitable. I found both movies are quite well done, each in their own way. If you liked "Miles Ahead", you are bound to also like "Born To Be Blue", and vice versa. Bottom line: "Born to be Blue" is worth checking out, be it on Amazon Instant Video or on DVD/Blu-ray.

I don't think this is a great film, not by a long shot. That may sound critical, but it's how I feel. I think it sidesteps many more interesting directions it could have gone in and instead chooses the safer, more predictable route a lot of the time. More than anything though, it serves as a vehicle for Ethan Hawke. He's always been a very solid, very reliable actor, but he doesn't really get many meaty dramatic roles like this. He does wonders with the role and really makes the lead character as likable as he could be, taking into account the circumstances. Definitely a solid watch and definitely a film for Ethan Hawke fans who wish he would get more parts like this. Some really great music as well.