It should come as a surprise to no one that I’m not a Tyler Perry fan. For a myriad of reasons: from the inconsistent quality control, the harmful stereotypes that proliferate his movies, and the rampant misogynoir in his work— his vision of Blackness disturbs me. And yet, my younger sisters love his movies. As do my other relatives. They feel seen by his work whereas mainstream filmmaking overlooks them. So, when I sat in my seat for the World Premiere of his latest film, “A Jazzman’s Blues,” I sat with a bundle of complicated feelings to watch a filmmaker I find neither appealing nor intriguing.
But “A Jazzman’s Blues” promised a side of Perry not seen since he first debuted the character Medea. For one, he wrote the script twenty-seven years ago when he was hungry and still finding his own voice. Which offers a kind of purity: what happens when you return to your roots? Netflix also stepped up to give Perry a lavish budget to fulfill his dream project. Considering my aforementioned impatience with his definition of quality control, the latter proved even more fascinating. If you gave Perry all of the resources he needed to make a serious prestige picture, what would that movie look and sound like? The want to know those answers provides enough appeal to pull you in, while the intermittent bursts of magic are enough to keep you invested.
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“A Jazzman’s Blues” begins easily enough in 1987 when an elderly woman drops by the office of a racist lawyer to report an unsolved murder that occurred over forty years ago. She hands the lawyer a stack of letters as her proof, and he begins to read. These missives belong to Bayou (Joshua Boone), a poor, shy Georgia boy living in 1947. He is derided by his vicious stepfather (E. Roger Mitchell) and his oft-championed, trumpet-playing half-brother Willie Earl (Austin Scott) for his dark skin, his seeming lack of intelligence, and dearth of talent (we discover later that Bayou has a beautiful singing voice). Bayou is mama’s boy. And mother Hattie Mae (Amirah Vann), who sings the blues by night and washes the town’s laundry by day, often stands up for her misunderstood son.
Bayou, however, soon finds another kindred spirit in this tight-knit Black community. Her name is Leanne (Solea Pfeiffer). She is light-skinned and beautiful, intelligent and kind. And yet, the other Black folks mock her with the name “Bucket” because her mother left her like an empty bucket with an abusive grandfather. The pair begin to talk, ultimately, evolving into clandestine nighttime get-togethers amidst the mossy trees. These scenes, while tender, are jagged in their tone. Take the way Boone plays Bayou, for instance. He does jigs to express happiness. And when Bayou jumps out of his window, he runs, with legs flailing outward, like a daddy longlegs through the fields toward the moss trees. When mixed with the moments of merriment, such as the party where stereotypical hoopin’ and hollerin’ occurs, the early minutes of Perry’s film can be described as a minstrel “Forrest Gump.”
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There is tension in “A Jazzman’s Blues” between the prestige trappings of a big-budget sentimentalized melodrama and the kind of filmmaker Perry is. He will always place a punchline at what, initially, feels like an inopportune time. His characters will always scream pointed dialogue that vocally describes their traits (check out the lampoon “The Boondocks” did of him as proof). No character demonstrates that more than Willie Earl, who leaves for Chicago to become a famous trumpeter with his stepfather after a blowout with his mother (he doesn’t have a line of dialogue that sounds like a real person). Those Tyler Perry-isms are a signature that at first come off as clunky here, but eventually smooths, mostly because the romance between Bayou and Leanne induces real emotion.
It’s why the limits of their love from external circumstances do shatter you. Bayou loses Leanne when her mother whisks her away to Boston. He writes letters for her every single day, only for Leanne’s mom to send them back.
In his introduction before the screening, Perry explained how a frank conversation with legendary playwright August Wilson gave him the drive to write “A Jazzman’s Blues.” And as the setting shifts from Georgia, by way of Bayou joining Willie Earl and his manager in Chicago, you almost get the sense that this is Perry’s attempt to replicate Wilson’s “Pittsburgh Cycle,” which also outlined the struggles Black folks faced during the Great Migration. In Chicago, the brothers perform at a local nightclub for white audiences. It’s here that the budget (and the craftsmanship it can buy) take over: The clipped editing by Maysie Hoy (a consistent Perry collaborator) becomes crisper and cleaner; the sunny score by Aaron Zigman wraps around you like a warm hug; and Terrance Blanchard’s infectious arrangements mixed with Debbie Allen’s lively choreography results in enchanting performances. The only drawback to the film’s many performances is how often the lighting and framing by DP Brett Pawlak (“Short Term 12”) often lose Boone in the compositions.
Still, the re-emergence of Leanne — inviting conversations around colorism, passing, addiction, and oppression — might be some of the sturdiest scripting of Perry’s career. He manages to mostly avoid falling into a tragic mulatto trope. And even reins back his Tyler Perry-isms in scenes that are harrowing and sensitive, intense and mournful. In a movie filled with the threat of violence, when it does occur, it’s not gratuitous or overwhelming. And by the end, when Bayou and Leanne are reunited for the briefest of minutes, you can feel the weight of their love through the calibrated, open performances given by Boone and Pfeiffer.
“A Jazzman’s Blues” is a passion project that climbs close to the edge of becoming self-indulgent fodder. The film is never as deep as it thinks it is. Nor is it terribly original either. But for Perry, this is a massive change. And while you shouldn’t praise a director for merely trying. Perry does more than try with “A Jazzman’s Blues.” He finally shows that he’s not a one-trick pony. [B-]
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