FILM REVIEW: GET ON UP

James Brown (Chadwick Boseman ) in Get On Up.

A man's man's world in America

By Ed Rampell

Tate Taylor’s well-directed Get On Up is a 138-minute biopic about “The Godfather of Soul," James Brown. Features about actual persons often suffer by not explaining the actions and behavior of their subjects, which is especially frustrating in movies about tortured artists who act in self destructive ways. For example, in the otherwise excellent 2000 biopic, Pollock, with its director Ed Harris depicting the action painter, Jackson Pollock’s alcoholism, abusive treatment of women, etc., is explained away with a line of dialogue or two while he’s strolling on a beach and refers to his unhappy childhood.

Well, that of course is “Freud 101”, but in Get On Up co-screenwriters Jez and John-Henry Butterworth provide details from James Brown’s (the stellar Chadwick Boseman) childhood that serve to explain and provide insight into the singer’s violent behavior, as well as into his talent and success as a singer. After a flash forward to a later criminal episode, the film progresses, more or less, in chronological order, but with frequent flashbacks that portray Brown’s turbulent childhood and life/career trajectory. The film also creatively includes scenes wherein Brown addresses the viewer in a pseudo-doc, “you-are-there” manner, and takes us into his thought process while Brown is performing, which are illuminating as well as imaginative.

As a boy growing up near Augusta, Georgia in the 1930s, James witnessed domestic abuse, which caused his mother, Susie Brown (the great Viola Davis), to abandon James. He’s then raised in a brothel by its madam, Aunt Honey (Octavia Spencer).

All the fame and fortune on Earth can’t compensate for a troubled childhood like this -- and it doesn’t. The singer who performed, composed and wrote the lyrics for 1965’s hit, "I Feel Good" didn’t always feel quite so good. Brown’s talent and drive propelled him to the top of the charts, yet he still beat his wife, DeeDee (Jill Scott), and mistreated others. The driving beat of Brown’s funkadelic music and his frenetic stagecraft often gave form to and expressed his inner demons through musical sublimation of tortured impulses.

Overall, Get On Up is a challenging, complex portrait of a complicated artist with, but of course, fabulous musical and dance numbers. This feature about “the hardest-working man in show business” is surely the hardest working biopic on the silver screen. And along with the upcoming Hendrix feature, Jimi: All is By My Side, and the sly post-racial comedy, Dear White People, Get On Up is riding the cinematic wave of black-themed of movies surging the theaters.