Raymond & Ray
Rodrigo García (director and writer), Igor Jadue-Lillo (cinematography), Michael Ruscio (editor)
Ethan Hawke, Ewan McGregor, Maribel Verdú, Tom Bower, Vondie Curtis Hall, Sophie Okonedo (cast)
Content warning: Child abuse
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| Image credit: Courtesy of TIFF |
In Raymond & Ray which premiered at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival, the titular characters, played by Ewan McGregor and Ethan Hawke, are half-brothers reunited after the death of their father. Their reactions to the news and the impending funeral suggest both men have a lot to process.
On their
journey to the cemetery, we learn more about their father from those who
interacted with him and the persona doesn’t quite match up with the man the
protagonists grew up with.
The film
starts off as a rumination on coming to terms with how death affects people
differently. Both Raymond and Ray had troubled relationships with their father
but they also reacted to that differently. I wish we’d learned more about those
intervening years—obviously, in a film with a curtailed runtime, one doesn’t
have the opportunity to eke out every detail, but while there are snippets of
memories we get too short a highlights reel of their lives to understand them
as characters.
The
interplay of humour and drama is laid out brilliantly, but it falls away
halfway through the film as more characters are introduced into the mix. What
begins as a study of grief and growth turns into a spectacle.
I felt
that the dialogue was pretty stilted and not all that natural. What made it
natural was the actors’ dialogue delivery.
The
chemistry between McGregor and Hawke is excellent. They believably play two
people who have a history together but have been estranged long enough that
they no longer know each other that well.
Hawke is
good in his role, but does not have as much screen time as I expected. I think
he got lost a little because Ray is a foil to McGregor’s Raymond, not a
character in his own right. Ray also spends more time chatting with nurse Kiera
(Sophie Okonedo) so we don’t get inside his head enough.
Hawke’s
character plays horns and while the actor did not play the music, he pretended
to play his instrument very convincingly. He had played Chet Baker in
another movie so that practice seems to have helped him in this role as
well.
McGregor
is always great at playing an average man and he continues to be excellent in Raymond
& Ray as well. McGregor carries himself as a man cowed by his life.
He’s amazing at bringing his emotions to the core, and he’s always arresting to
watch. I wonder if non-fans will think he’s doing the same thing again, but I
think McGregor is compelling.
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| Image credit: Courtesy of TIFF |
I was disappointed in the character Maribel Verdú plays, and none of it is the actor's fault. She is captivating and so full of life, exactly the way her character is supposed to be. But Lucía is a character we have seen so many times before. I really wish writer/director Rodrigo García had subverted our expectations of this character. She’s little more than a manic pixie dream girl. Really, in 2022, we’re still writing characters like this?
On the
other hand, Sophie Okonedo as Kiera is somewhat of a revelation. Her
performance is so patient and kind, exactly how one would expect a nurse to
behave in and out of work. Her storyline does subvert expectations but it makes
me wonder why the story includes the tropes of a stoic Black woman and a highly
sexualized Spanish woman?
The music,
which really only comes to the fore in the final half hour, is amazing. Mesmeric
and calming, it’s like the jazz melodies take over only once the weight is
lifted off the characters. That’s the only saving grace of the last half hour because the film drags during this period and fell into a few cliches.
In all
honesty, Raymond & Ray should have ended with the funeral—I don’t
know why it continued on after that. As it is the funeral scene sort of lost
the plot and then everything that came after made it all the more boring.
I think
the first half hour of the film, where Raymond and Ray are trying to unravel
their real feelings about their father is the strongest. The film should have
focused on the two of them hearing alternate takes on their father rather than
bringing in more characters to complicate the storyline.
The addition of that many characters with their own arcs in the story made the film feel all the more like exposition. And in the end, I don’t think the audience got the catharsis we wanted to feel for the protagonists.
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