Butler's Cinema Scene

Ethan Hawke as Chet Baker

“BORN TO BE BLUE” My rating: B

97 minutes | MPAA rating: R

We are introduced to musician Chet Baker (Ethan Hawke) in a filthy jail cell. He’s lying on the concrete floor in a fetal position, sweat pouring off him, surrounded by cigarette butts. He seems to be going through heroin withdrawl.

So we know from the getgo that “Born to Be Blue,” Canadian filmmaker Robert Budreau’s feature about the “James Dean of jazz,” is going to be a rough ride.

Trumpeter/vocalist Baker (1929-1988) is famed as the inventor of West Coast swing. He is also the very model of the white junkie jazz genius, his main competition for the title being the late Art Pepper.

“Born to Be Blue” isn’t a formal biopic. Rather, writer/director Bureau attempts something like Todd Hayne’s Bob Dylan-themed “I’m Not There.” Think of it as a fantasia on the life and loves of a terrific musician who was also a deeply flawed individual.

The junkie jazzman is hardly a new cinematic concept, but “Born…” benefits from what may be Hawke’s strongest performance. Chet Baker was a handsome, charismatic charmer who, when he wasn’t creating great music, was battling demons.

Watching Hawke’s work here, we realize why people were drawn to Baker, and why most eventually bailed.

The film begins in 1954 with the young Chet playing New York City, pursued by swooning bobbysoxers and desperate to earn the approval of his idols and competitors, Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie.

In this black-and-white segment he picks up a beautiful black woman and takes her to his hotel suite, where she turns him on to heroin. Their buzz is interrupted when the woman (Carmen Ejogo, the Brit who played Coretta Scott King in “Selma”) breaks character and accuses Chet of ignoring their dialogue and improvising.

Ethan Hawke, Carmen Ejogo

Suddenly we’re on a full-color Hollywood set . Chet is playing himself in a movie designed to capitalize on his current popularity. He seems less interested in acting than in seducing his co-star, Jane.

Their first date goes disastrously wrong when Chet is jumped by drug dealers to whom he owes big bucks. In the beating his mouth is destroyed. He’s unable to play his horn. His movie project is cancelled.

But Jane (a fictional character that is an amalgam of several women in the real Baker’s life) sticks with Chet as he slowly and painfully learns to blow with new dentures, taking session work and donning a sombrero to perform in a mariachi band.

Little by little Chet re-establishes his musical bona fides. But always lurking in the background is the siren call of dope.

“Born to Be Blue” would be pretty grim stuff if not for the love story at its center. It works in large part because Ejobo so fully inhabits Jane, a character fashioned from whole cloth. Her devotion to Chet is strong, but tempered by the reality that with drug addicts security is an iffy proposition.

At one point she asks Chet: “Why are you such a fuckup?”

His answer: “It makes me happy.”

It’s about as honest a response as a junkie could give.

| Robert W. Butler