"Drumline"

The surprise of an overcrowded season, this rousing marching-band drama introduces a talented young director -- and packs a wallop.

By Charles Taylor

Jan 10, 2003 | When a movie by a fledgling director with no major stars goes into theaters at the same time as the prestige Christmas releases, it's practically guaranteed to disappear. But "Drumline," which is still in theaters a few weeks after opening, has actually managed to find an audience amid all the big-deal releases competing for your attention.

The script for this drama about a marching band at a predominantly black Atlanta college, by Tina Gordon Chism and Shawn Schepps, rarely rises above the conventional and serviceable. But the direction, by Charles Stone III (who earlier last year directed the hip-hop drama "Paid in Full"), gives the movie its distinction. When a young director, working in the mainstream, shows this much craft in only his second feature, and when he's so resistant to the stylistic clichés of the genre he's working in (for want of a better distinction, call it a "youth" movie), it's a good bet that he's headed for impressive things.

At one time in Hollywood, the sort of "invisible" craft at which Stone is so adept wouldn't seem like a big deal. It was part and parcel of a competence that -- at minimum -- directors were expected to have. Now, when there's no assurance that a Hollywood movie will have a story that even makes sense, or attempts to define -- let alone explore -- its characters, Stone's talent is a big deal. He's proof that mainstream movies can find an audience without being the same old big-budget crap that favors sensation above everything else.

The story is basic. Devon (Nick Cannon), a talented drummer from a Harlem high school, wins a full scholarship to play in the marching band of an Atlanta college. Cocky and with a forest-size chip on his shoulder, Devon cannot submerge his identity to fit into the group's credo of "one band, one sound." Of course, the movie is about how he learns to put his talent to the use of his fellow band mates. And along the way there's a believable and unforced romance with Laila (Zoë Saldana), an upperclassman on the cheerleading squad. If that conjures up images of short skirts and rump shaking, think again. Stone doesn't shoot Saldana as a hoochie mama. Laila is smart and makes Devon work for her respect. Saldana's performance is only the most typical example of the way Stone doesn't force his actors into playing stereotypes.

I'll admit to having one problem with "Drumline" that may have more to do with my sensibility than any fault of the movie. As run by its director Dr. Lee (Orlando Jones) and its student leader Sean (Leonard Roberts, probably most familiar as Forrest, a few seasons back on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"), the band operates with military-like discipline. That involves verbal abuse, humiliation, even a hint of sexual harassment -- in short, the sort of bullying that makes me long to see the bullies get theirs. We're meant to see Devon's refusal to submit as proof of his cockiness, and God knows something needs to knock the smirk off this kid's face. But his resistance feels like his way of maintaining his individuality and self-respect. As in every movie I've ever seen featuring a drill instructor, for much of the first section of "Drumline," I would have been happy to see Devon land his boot in the asses of his tormentors.

But of course the point of the movie is that that wouldn't get him anywhere. There's a conservatism at work in "Drumline" that plays itself out in both Devon's behavior and in the cultural questions that the picture touches on, despite its limited script. Dr. Lee is under pressure from the college president to give the public what it wants, which means a lot of high-stepping flash and, musically, whatever faceless stuff is currently on top of the charts.

When a visiting team opens their routine with a rap tune, Lee, as proud as he is intransigent, has his band respond with "Flight of the Bumblebee" to prove that musicianship is not dead. It doesn't exactly set the crowd's toes a-tapping. Lee insists he's providing an education for the band members under his tutelage. That touches on a bigger question, for both black culture and all of pop culture: Does the sampling that is now the norm in hip-hop and dance music reflect a retreat from craft, or is it simply a different kind of craft, one where the emphasis is on rappers and producers rather than instrumentalists?

You can understand why a musician like Dr. Lee would choose the former answer. But the movie comes down on Lee's side of the equation, too. Press the argument too far in one direction and you'll find something close to the (black as well as white) commentators who have argued that hip-hop represents a degradation of black culture. The problem with those commentators is their unwillingness to make distinctions; they conveniently reduce all of hip-hop to gangsta-and-ho posturing. But giving all aspects of black culture a free pass (as some liberals might) is just as much a refusal to make distinctions. "Drumline" is bracing because it offers the rare spectacle of a mainstream movie actually addressing cultural questions.

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