Stanley Nelson’s sublime documentary, MILES DAVIS: BIRTH OF THE COOL, starts with a quote from Miles Davis – Music has always been like a curse with me. I have always felt driven to play it. It has always been the first thing in my life, go to bed thinking about it and wake up thinking about it. It’s always there. It comes before everything.
Like Davis’ music, the film is unique from the first note, a jazz riff collage of cultural snapshots, talking head interviews, studio and concert clips.
From his birth in 1926 to his death in 1991, the film shows how Miles continually reinvented himself, especially in the late 60s and early 80’s.
As one of the architects of modern jazz that began at the close of WWII, Miles new complexities replaced old naivities, and in the process, jazz grew up, became sophisticated and cool.
The film pulls no punches in showing the man Miles Davis as less dependably superb as the artist, Miles Davis. It proffers the theory that his abysmal treatment of women stemmed from his father, a dentist who was not above extracting teeth from his wife through domestic violence.
Frances Taylor, who was Miles’ spouse for a decade, is interviewed at length and says that the cocktail of jealousy and drug abuse fuelled a macho paranoia that ended their love affair. He demanded she give up her career to cook and clean for him.
There seems to have been a ferocious struggle between the better angels of his personality and the demons that plagued him – racism and chronic pain among the legion.
No such struggle though between his instinct towards evolution, eschewing adherence to tradition for progressive growth in playing and composition and other cultural influence – Spanish and Indian most particularly.
The Spanish word duende is evoked in the film, a term that conjures the quality of conquering the summit of one’s art. What this film shows is that Miles Davis had duende in spades.
MILES DAVIS: BIRTH OF THE COOL – see it, hear it, feel it.
MILES DAVIS: BIRTH OF THE COOL is screening from Thursday August 22 – Sunday August 25 at:the Dendy Opera Quays and Dendy Newtown.
Session times: https://www.dendy.com.au/events/miles-davis-birth-of-the-cool