Review: Get On Up

James Brown - Soul Brother No. 1, Mr. Dynamite, Godfather of Soul, the hardest working man in show business. There's no denying that he was large and contained multitudes, not a bit tamed and perhaps untranslatable. Get On Up gives it a go, utilising a fragmentary narrative that befits a man of multiple monikers and which attempts to match the jagged funk of Brown's music.

When we first see Brown, he's in his later years, walking down a darkened corridor leading to a concert stage. A swirl of voices run through his head, uttering lines from various periods in his life. Director Tate Taylor (The Help) and screenwriters Jez and John-Henry Butterworth use these snippets as the film's narrative tracklist and firmly set it on shuffle. Within the first half hour alone, we see Brown on the decline, essentially holding several of his employees hostage so he can figure out who used his toilet; then flash back 20 years earlier to 1968 as he meets President Lyndon B. Johnson; then on his way to perform for the troops in Vietnam; and then to his hardscrabble childhood in a ramshackle cabin where he bore witness to his parents' tumultuous marriage and his mother abandoning him.

More chaotic hopscotching unfurls: Brown growing up in a brothel, Brown pissed off that he and the Famous Flames can't close a show because they're too black for white America, a teenage Brown being sentenced to jail for stealing a suit, then being taken in by Bobby Byrd (Nelsan Ellis), whose musical group he would soon usurp but whose friendship would be lifelong despite the difficulties of being in Brown's shadow; an encounter with the newly minted Little Richard (Brandon Smith, memorable in his few minutes onscreen) who advises, "The devil is going to be white in a fancy suit and he gonna ask you what you want. And you best...be ready for him."

All throughout this disorganised mess Brown is shown to be an egomaniac, a perfectionist, a shrewd hustler that was both business and show, a cold and calculating opportunist who believed in the myth he was making. It's commendable, this commitment to showing the worse of Brown's personality. Soulless in his personal relationships, Brown harnessed his emotions for the stage, unleashing his id on the audience and performing like a man possessed.

By the end, when Taylor and the Butterworths gather all the pieces from Brown's life and replay them in a montage, one would presume it's meant to be an indication that these parts make up the sum of the man. Yes and no. In truth, the filmmakers' splintered approach plus the device of having Brown address the audience directly is clumsy and muddled under Taylor's control.

Of all the vignettes crammed into this biopic, three are the best curated: Brown's decision to go ahead and perform a show after Martin Luther King's assassination ("We are black," he chastises the audience which threaten to get out of control. "Let's represent ourselves. Don't make us all look bad."); his brief reunion with his mother (Viola Davis) - "No one else helped me," he states, denying her as she denied him all those years ago; and a televised taping where he and the Famous Flames, garbed in red sweaters patterned with snowflakes, perform in a ski lodge setting inhabited by shiny, happy white people. "Hell no," he thinks, "I'm in a honkey hoedown." These segments convey a focus that is absent from the rest of the screenplay.

Fortunately, there is Chadwick Boseman. He is nothing short of phenomenal, perfectly capturing the hyperkinetic dynamism of Brown's musical performance as well as the man's many moods and contradictions. He does right by Brown.

Get On Up

Directed by: Tate Taylor

Written by: Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth

Starring: Chadwick Boseman, Nelsan Ellis, Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Dan Aykroyd, Lennie James, Craig Robinson, Aunjanue Ellis, Jill Scott, Brandon Smith