Film Review: Bird

I’ve been doing a lot of traveling lately, including eight flights in the past three weeks, which means the opportunity to watch some films that aren’t available on the streaming services I subscribe to. One such film, the 1988 biopic Bird about legendary jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker is only available on Apple TV, so I jumped at the chance to watch it on the plane.

Directed by Clint Eastwood, the film has sparked some controversy for its depiction of Parker, but with a respectable 81% on Rotten Tomatoes, I was optimistic. Clocking in at a whopping 2 hours and 41 minutes, it’s a good selection for a long-haul international flight, but I was still skeptical about the length. Despite being so long, the film completely glosses over Parker’s childhood and early musical experience, jumping right into mid-career. I thought this was an odd choice and would’ve liked to see a little more of his upbringing and background. For example, Bird is known for spending several foundational years practicing for 10+ hours a day, a vital element of his musical journey that was not included at all.

Where the film draws some controversy is in its emphasis (perhaps overemphasis) on Parker’s drug addiction. To be fair, this was a defining part of his life and career. It caused him to lose a lot of career opportunities and gigs for being unreliable and was the leading cause of his early death at age 34. (The doctors initially thought he was over twice that age when he died because of how bad his condition was). He even sold his saxophone multiple times for drug money. While the film certainly did not shy away from this part of the narrative, I actually thought they did a good job of balancing it with scenes about his musicianship and career, much better than some other biopics of this nature that completely neglect the actual music side of things.

The film also spent a lot of time on Parker’s familial relationships as a husband and father. Parker’s wife Chan was heavily consulted in the making of the film, so it can be assumed that these depictions are fairly accurate. Another major character in the film, trumpeter Red Rodney was also consulted, which helps with the accuracy of Bird’s depiction outside of the home. Does the film dramatize and ham things up? Sure, but it’s a biopic from the 1980s intended for widespread popular appeal, so you can’t really expect anything else. All things considered, I thought it struck a better balance than some other jazz biopics.

I also thought they did a good job with the casting. Forest Whitaker stars as Bird and he looks fairly accurate. I also think he does a convincing job of miming playing the sax, which is no easy feat for a non-musician. Whitaker did take some saxophone lessons to prepare for the role and ensure his fingerings and posture were authentic, which paid off. The musical performances in the film are dubbed from Charlie Parker’s original recordings, which I prefer to the approach some other musician biopics take of re-recording the music.

As a trumpet player myself, I also paid close attention to the trumpeter character casting. In the role of Dizzy Gillespie, Samuel E. Wright is cast fairly well in terms of appearance, and he did a pretty good impression of Dizzy’s mannerisms, except for that fact that when he “played” trumpet he alternated between 1 and 2 fingerings every other note without exception. (For non trumpeters, we label the three fingers/valves with 1 (pointer), 2 (middle), and 3 (ring) and use these to write out fingerings (1, 12, 2, 23, 13, 123, etc). If you are a trumpet player or have spent any amount of time watching a real trumpet player, you’d know that this makes no sense and if you were really playing bebop improvisation you’d without a doubt have 12 , 23, and 0 (open) in there and the patterns would not simply alternate between two fingerings. To a trumpeter like myself, this is a pretty glaring flaw and it actually made me laugh out loud when I watched it.

Playing trumpeter Red Rodney, Michael Zelniker looked slightly more accurate in his miming, but I could still pick out inconsistencies on more complex bop lines and his valves were in desperate need of some oil. He did actually play the correct fingerings on the head of “Now’s the Time” though, to his credit.

Overall, if you can find three hours of free time (no easy feat these days if your schedule is anything like mine), or if you find yourself on an eight-hour international flight with nothing else to do, Bird is worth a watch.

If you’ve already seen Bird, let me know what you think in the comments!