'Born to Be Blue': Life of junkie jazz man Chet Baker

He made the trumpet soar into sublime spheres, and when he sang, he turned jaunty lines such as "Let's defrost in a romantic mist / Let's get crossed off everybody's list" into something beautiful and aching, too.

He was also, per one of the characters in the impressive, impressionistic biopic Born to Be Blue, "the world's biggest junkie."

So how did Chet Baker pull that off?

Part of the charm of writer/director Robert Budreau's half-tribute, half-speculative dive into the musician's life is that Born to Be Blue doesn't pretend to have all the answers. What it does have - in addition to an immersive performance from Ethan Hawke as the cool-cat jazz man - is an emotional understanding of who Baker was, or may have been.

Taking a detail from the Baker biography - that while he was doing time in an Italian jail, he was offered the chance to star in a movie about his life - Budreau goes on to imagine that that film actually got made. (It didn't.)

So, in Born to Be Blue, there are scenes of Hawke's Baker reenacting pivotal Baker moments, such as falling for a girl in a Harlem nightclub and then falling into an ecstatic haze the first time he shoots up. Then, the director yells "Cut!", and Baker is seen actually putting the moves on the actress who plays the elegant Harlem lady.

The actress' name is Jane (Carmen Ejogo, who played Coretta Scott King in Selma), and despite warning signs and an instinctual wariness, she throws in with Baker.

For a while, the pair are broke, sleeping in a VW minibus parked on a precipice overlooking the Pacific. In Born to Be Blue, that comes close to being the best time in Baker's life.

Hawke sings the standards that Baker sang - "My Funny Valentine," "I've Never Been in Love Before" - and he's pretty good. When he croons, gently, sweetly, to Jane, you get why she takes leave of her senses and falls for the guy. The actor handles his horn and fingers the buttons with a cool swagger, too.

The true story that Born to Be Blue turns on is the one about "Chetty" getting his teeth knocked out. The musician owed money to a dealer, and when Baker didn't pay up, he was beaten to a pulp. His damaged dentition made it painful to play the trumpet.

There's a scene with Baker, in a bathtub, trying to blow on his horn. The blood spurts from his gums, his face full of horrible agony.

By the end of Born to Be Blue, which hops from West Coast (Baker's home turf) to East, and which shifts from black-and-white to color, the musician faces a crucial decision. He's on the rebound, he has reestablished a connection with his manager/producer (played by Callum Keith Rennie), and he has been booked back into Birdland, the hallowed room where Miles and Dizzy play.

Baker's choice is a heartbreaker. But Born to Be Blue makes sense of it - or at least as much sense as a life filled with grace and misery, beauty and despair, can ever make.

srea@phillynews.com
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Born to Be Blue

Directed by Robert Budreau. With Ethan Hawke, Carmen Ejogo, and Callum Keith Rennie. Distributed by IFC Films.
Running time: 1 hour, 37 mins.
Parent's guide: R (drugs, sex, profanity, adult themes).
Playing at: Ritz Five.