Blues fans will go nuts when, during Antoine Fuqua's new documentary "Lightning in a Bottle," they see Buddy Guy, Mavis Staples and B.B. King perform live standards on the same stage during a once-in-a-lifetime concert at New York's Radio City Music Hall. And for everyone else, Macy Gray, Stephen Tyler and Bill Cosby might do the trick.
Stephen Tyler? Bill Cosby? Well, this is a mostly blues documentary, anyway. In fact, "Lightning" attempts to tell the story of the genre using a live concert held back in 2003 featuring most, if not all, of the greatest living blues musicians. But, while this was no doubt an amazing concert, the film is at best an amusing introduction to the music that preaches best to fans that already sing, or listen to, the blues.
Fuqua must have seen Ken Burns' "Jazz" several years ago and decided that was not how to make a music documentary. The 19- hour PBS phenomenon attempted to tell the complete history of jazz but was critiqued for its dullness and, of course, length. Fuqua approaches his film with an entirely different and intriguing live music mindset but doesn't quite strike the promised balance between blues performance and history that audiences will expect.
The film opens with a brief montage and introduction by Martin Scorsese, who executive produced the concert and directed his own PBS blues documentary that aired last September. Few details are given about the concert, but a few audience close-ups, showing mostly wealthy-looking white people, suggest that these tickets were either passed out in the Hamptons or given only to Scorsese's relatives.
Concert details aside, we're plunged into a powerful performance by Ang?©lique Zodjo, who represents the African origins of the blues. We know this because in the backdrop are stereotypical photographs of an African savannah: tall grass, a lonely tree and a beautiful sunset. Cheesy stage d?©cor like this occurs throughout the film, but hey, it looks nice.
Natalie Cole sings a beautiful and hip version of "St. Louis Blues" and then joins Mavis Staples and Ruth Brown - among the few women in blues - in a nostalgic rendition of "Men are Like Street Cars." Bill Cosby then happens to appear on stage at that moment, making funny faces. Is he trying to look like a streetcar? In any case, he has no reason to be there, except perhaps to make the promotional posters look more interesting.
Macy Gray oozes cool while singing "Hound Dog" in sunglasses and a big hairdo, in total control of the theatre's mood. This is surprising since, in her rehearsal footage, we see that she doesn't completely know what she's doing. But R&B, rock, country and rap started with the blues, which is perhaps why Macy Gray, Stephen Tyler, Bonnie Raitt and Chuck D have little trouble interpreting the classics throughout the film (while boosting the film credits at the same time!).
Chuck D, for that matter, also has little trouble criticizing the Bush administration when he changes the lyrics of "Boom boom boom boom" to "No boom boom boom boom / Mr. Son of a Bush / We don't want no war."
Actual blues musicians include Buddy Guy, Larry Johnson, Clarence "Gatehouse" Brown (who plays "American and world music - Texas style") and Fats Domino, who all give exciting performances. Fats Domino, in fact, mostly performs sitting in a red throne-like chair but is so energized by the end that he stands up, sending waves of energy through the audience on film and in the cinema.
Fuqua films each performance using simple camerawork, zooming in appropriately when we want to see B.B. King's guitar finger action, filming the whole stage when we want to see the musicians interacting with each other and shooting the audience for some anti-Bush reaction during Chuck D's surprise.
In between each excerpted performance, the film presents interviews with deceased blues masters, footage of rehearsals the week before or archival film and photos trying to present the social climate during the time each song was written. This is where the documentary can get shallow: can a few-second shot of a black lynching spliced between Buddy Guy and Macy Gray give justice to the harsh historical realities of the time?
Despite its flaws, Fuqua's film and Scorsese's concert make an admirable and useful contribution to American musical history. Art Kane's famous jazz group portrait, "A Great Day in Harlem," is remembered by jazz fans everywhere as having brought together in one place the greatest number of jazz heroes ever. Blues fans are lucky because Fuqua's film presents a live version of that, just in time for many of these aging blues masters. Ruth Brown said it right: "We aren't at a funeral, usually that's the only time we see each other."
