A Vintage Review of the Charlie Parker Biopic

I’m mostly against the biopic as a form, but I’m pro-enthusiasm, exuberance, which, as the parable tells us, is beauty. I agree, and so when the form felt new, the dead bodies were only a couple decades fresh and their flesh could be mined for celluloid with less redundancy, maybe the movies exploiting the tragic beauty of the lives of black musicians reinventing form/jazz, were better, more earnest. At the very least more difficult to apprehend with rehearsed cynicism. It’s worth glancing back, wondering, reincarnating the curious mind toward what it’s shut out as the static of foregone conclusions. We do need things to love.