At times, it feels as though director Clint Eastwood is prepared to turn Bird into something resembling a jazz solo. Chronology dips and darts from present to past and back again. Individual scenes are characterized less by narrative detail than they are by colours, moods and impressions. In fits and starts, this biography tracing the tragic life of saxophonist Charlie “Yardbird” Parker ( Forest Whitaker) flirts with the riffing, improvisational vibe of be-bop itself.
Eastwood – a self-proclaimed jazz aficionado who once saw Parker perform live – is a gifted film-maker, but if there’s one word you’d probably never use to describe his style, it’s “improvisational.” As a director, Eastwood is a meticulous craftsman, ruthlessly efficient even in his inordinate fondness for two-hour-plus running times. Bird might have been a fragmented masterpiece in the hands of someone who didn’t display such disdain for fragmentation. Reduced to the bare bones of people and plot, the film winds up dancing around the edges of questions it doesn’t answer – straight-ahead rhythm coupled with straight-ahead melody, and not quite enough depth to either one.
As a character piece, Bird is frequently engrossing. Whitaker delivers a haunting, haunted performance as Parker, the alcoholic-junkie-genius whose unique style created a new jazz vocabulary. Much of the plot focuses on Parker’s relationship with his wife Chan, portrayed by Diane Venora with a quirky intensity that subverts “long-suffering artist’s spouse” stereotypes. Eastwood and screenwriter Joel Oliansky also capture the uneasy relationships between Parker and fellow musicians like Dizzy Gillespie (Samuel E. Wright) – some of whom idolize him, some of whom envy his gifts and others who just pity his self-destructive streak. And of course there’s lots of great music, including an Oscar-winning sound mix that incorporates Parker’s own solos into the arrangements.
What’s missing from Bird is a drive to understand the “why’s” of Parker’s story. Why did reformed party girl Chan devote herself to Parker? Why was Parker driven to drugs as a youth, even before his chronic ulcers made self-medication a convenient excuse? Why was he such an influential figure in jazz history? Bird overflows with factual detail – including unnecessary sub-plots like Parker’s persecution at the hands of Federal narcotics agents – but lacks insight. It’s a tragedy without texture.
There’s a scene late in Bird in which Parker relates to his trumpeter Red Rodney (Michael Zelniker) the story of how he discovered his distinctive sound – his ability to get “inside the melody.” Whitaker is great in the scene, as he is great throughout the film, but Eastwood stages it almost entirely as a monologue. A pivotal moment in the history of music is described in words, rather than conveyed cinematically. Ultimately, that’s what makes Bird simply diverting, rather than gripping. Eastwood can tell Parker’s story, but he can never quite get inside the melody.
