I wanted to like Miles Ahead, I really did. I went to the movie anticipating a wonderful cinematic experience, not my usual one of disappointment whenever the topic is Black folks. I knew I would love Don Cheadle’s performance and the fact that he had a hand in writing this screenplay made me hopeful that it would be wonderful. Well, to say I was underwhelmed is an understatement.
As a diehard jazz fan, I hoped for more emphasis on Miles’ musical genius and less on his pathological lifestyle. Yes, we all know Miles was fuckin’ nuts and was a misogynistic narcissist, and I wouldn’t have minded being re-minded of that but to be sledgehammered throughout the film about this aspect of who Miles was just diminished the narrative’s goal of telling us Miles just wanted to control his product. I don’t know if Don thought we wouldn’t keep watching if there wasn’t excessive violence or what, but he really miscalculated some of us audience member’s ability to engage a narrative that didn’t employ the usual Hollywood bullshit! Since the story was a fictionalized account of Miles’ life with references to real occurrences, I am assuming Cheadle had some creative license to steer this story in whatever direction he saw fit. How disappointing that he steered it in the path of sensationalism rather than intellectualism. Miles was one deep muthafucka and this story could have been much more intriguing if Cheadle had chosen to dig deeper into where Miles’ music came from and how it developed rather than taking the easy way out and reducing the creative process to the cliché of being guided by a muse i.e. a beautiful woman in this case. It didn’t help my mood that the movie was preceded by a commercial for some luxury car that had Muhammad Ali fighting himself to illustrate the point of striving to be your best self juxtaposed against a white guy playing chess who was doing the same (black man:savage brute; white man: intellectual).
Maybe I’m just being too sensitive about racial shit and maybe I should not expect so much from movies but I can’t help but wonder how a black man could not think this film is doing Black people, Black culture and Black music a disservice. As I said, no one thinks Miles Davis was a saint and no one believes he died of natural causes but to spend over 2 hours driving home the point that his demons were more relevant than his contribution to America’s classical music seems like a colossal waste of film & time.
