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Tuesday, Nov 24, 2009
"Make" is the operative word here, because in addition to being a story of redemption, "Hustle & Flow" is also about the deep pleasures (and the mystery) of making music out of nothing, of telling a story that amounts to something much greater than the specific lyrics sung or notes played. Against the half-reassuring, half-uncertain-as-hell chug of Shelby's beat machine, with Key at the soundboard and Shug stepping in, on a whim, to sing backup, DJay reads off the words he has written on a small pad, learning as he goes which beats to stress and which ones he should let ride.
The song doesn't sound so great at first, but before long it starts to grow with the same assured mightiness of Jack's beanstalk, sprouting fat branches and leafy digressions -- it stops sounding like an amateurish, homegrown track and turns into something essential and alive. When sweet, insecure Shug hears the glory of her voice on the playback, her face registers such joy and astonishment that you can't help laughing with her, caught up in the pure rush of her exhilaration. (Henson's performance here is both quiveringly delicate and potent; it's one of the movie's key compass points.)
The music opens something up in DJay, too. His cocky desperation begins to smooth down into something resembling relaxed confidence. The song (its lyrics are an un-self-pitying, critical lament about the rough life of a pimp) isn't just an accessory or prop in the movie; it becomes its nerve center and its racing heart, a driving force in the narrative.
"Hustle & Flow" is Brewer's second feature (his first was "The Poor & Hungry," a small indie that played the festival circuit and the Independent Film Channel), and although it's a renegade, heartfelt picture made on a smallish budget, it's also an inspiring example of how far good instincts and intelligence can take a filmmaker. Brewer has a knack for finding the small details that open up the secrets of even a minor character. (There's a wonderful sequence in which Key's wife, Yevette, played by Elise Neal, makes a lonely supper for herself, since Key has become consumed with working on DJay's record. Frustrated and depressed, she shows up at DJay's house, even though it's on the "other" side of town and inhabited by disreputable women; we think she's going to berate her husband, but instead, she has brought sandwiches for everybody -- she opens herself to this small ragtag community, and they're happy to welcome her.)
Brewer grew up in Memphis, and he lives there now: His love for this vivid, confounding city -- including the parts of it that are far from pretty -- informs every frame of the picture. He shows us cars beat up and patched up to within an inch of their lives, groups of smallish houses lined up in tight rows, and streets so dismal they make the Boulevard of Broken Dreams look like Candyland. Yet there's nothing depressing about the look of "Hustle & Flow" -- Brewer understands that what's most vital about Memphis can't be found in its more conventionally attractive tourist haunts. This is a city where blues and R&B, rock 'n' roll and hip-hop (the songs in the movie are by local Memphis artists Three 6 Mafia and Al Kapone), have thrived so vigorously it's almost mystical. You can't believe in pop music if you don't believe in Memphis.
And whether it was purely intentional or just a stroke of luck, Brewer found a lead actor with one of the greatest voices in the movies today. I once had an art teacher who, as a way of getting us kids to capture the essence of an object instead of just making a visual approximation of it, explained that not every line we drew had to be one continuous flow; if we were to occasionally lift the pencil from the paper, in just the right place, the eye would automatically leap the gap. "The eye loves it," she explained. "It loves connecting that line." In "Hustle & Flow" Howard's speaking voice is like that broken line: It has an opaque, husky, graphite richness, but now and then bits of it fall away, leaving just a rasp of a whisper.
Howard has all the Memphis locutions down cold, but almost any talented actor could do that with just a few weeks of study: We're not just talking about Meryl Streep learning an accent, but about a character owning a voice. I found myself leaning closer to the screen to listen to Howard; I instinctively wanted to be closer to that sound. The eye loves "Hustle & Flow," and the ear does too. This is heat you can see and hear.
